Disclaimer: Dolfin Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Dolfin Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
It’s a yearly occurrence: we rank out the top 20 high school recruits in the nation, trying to get our rankings out early enough that they’re informative, before the bulk of athletes have already verbally committed to schools.
And then someone goes out in a May high school state meet and shakes up our freshly-made rankings with a huge swim.
This time around, it’s Harker School junior Ethan Hu, ranked last week as the #11 recruit in his class. Hu dominated the CIF Central Coast Section, hitting two new lifetime-bests and making an argument to surge towards the top seven in his class.
Hu opened the meet going 1:44.62 in the 200 IM – that was a drop of almost two full seconds from his previous best. Outside of the top two swimmers in the class (Carson Foster and Luca Urlando, who are in a league of their own), Hu is now one of the top IMers in his recruiting class. #3 Destin Lasco has been 1:44.59, #14 Rick Mihm 1:44.97, honorable mention Sean Faikish 1:44.88 and #12 Wyatt Davis 1:45.63.
Later in the meet, Hu went 45.90 in the 100 fly, smashing his previous best of 46.25. Hu’s new time would have earned an NCAA invite in 2019, and is only three tenths from NCAA scoring range. For reference, only five other boys in the 2020 recruiting class have NCAA invite times, and only Foster and Urlando have scoring times.
Hu also went 20.58 leading off the 200 free relay (not quite a lifetime-best) and split 21.1 on the fly leg of Harker’s section championship 200 medley relay. You can read our full Central Coast Section recap here.
Looking at recruiting ranks as a whole, there’s probably an argument that Hu could move up about as high as 7th. (It’d be hard to place him over 19.5/43.7 sprinter Matt Brownstead, even if Hu has a vastly superior 100 fly). Even better: Hu is now easily the second-best prospect still on the recruiting board, as most have already verbally committed.
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Scared Luca away from state 👀