Ryan Nicholson, who collegeswimming.com ranks as the 39th-best in the country and second-best in the state of New York, has verbally committed to swim at Duke.
Nicholson is extremely versatile, having been named an All-American last year in four different individual events and one relay: an impressive total considering that the high school swimming schedule only allows two individual events in a single meet.
Nicholson swims for the Syracuse Chargers and Ithaca High School. His best times in the 50-200 freestyles are 20.49/45.56/1:42.18. This shows that he definitely has a touch of endurance, but probably projects best as a sprinter. He’s also been 1:51.80 in the 100 IM, and 48.30 in the 100 fly.
The Dukies just graduated Ben Hwang, a phenomenal sprinter, and junior Stefan Knight should crack 20 seconds in the 50 and 44 seconds in the 100 this year this year. Nicholson will then jump into a talented, but still rather young, sprint freestyle group.
As for the butterfly group, that battle got really interesting in the last month at Duke. They brought in four (count that 4) freshman who have been faster than the time that their outgoing senior, Jacob Bieze, led the team with in 2012-2013. That includes Michael Miller, Joey Maginnis, Dylan Payne, and Kaz Takabayashi, though at this point in his career, Nicholson is faster than any of those were in the 100.
