2025 U.S. OPEN
- December 3-6, 2025
- Austin, Texas
- Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center
- Prelims: 10 a.m. EST
- Finals: 7 p.m EST (Day 1: 5 p.m. EST)
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
Indiana freshman Noah Cakir has been moving up the ranks of college swimming. Quickly.
At IU’s mid-season meet, the Ohio State Invite, Cakir clocked personal bests of 52.11 and 1:51.68 in the 100/200 breast, good for 34th and 9th in the NCAA. Then at the US Open in Austin, Cakir clocked times of 1:00.55 (7th) and 2:11.38 (2nd), improving his LCM bests as well.
This was just 3 months of collegiate training. Prior to arriving in Bloomington, Cakir had only practiced 6 times a week for most of the year, only doing doubles in the summers. This seems to indicate that Cakir is already on a big improvement curve and we could see even bigger drops from the newcomer come championship season.
W chucker
I’ve been retired from coaching for a decade and I still remember parents leaving our club because we wouldn’t let their 12 year old do doubles. They were some good swimmers that either quit the sport or stopped improving in their high school years. There are far more examples of starting doubles that early ending poorly than the success stories. Even then I don’t imagine parents have become more rational about it over the years.
Doubles isn’t a simple binary, good or bad. A lot of it depends on the athlete and the pool time available. Luka M is having tons of success with doubles. I realize that’s just one example.
I agree with your point, but what makes you think Mijatovic does doubles?
Lol, you must not know much about Steve and PLS
That’s the thing. Websites says one thing and everything else says another
All good – obviously I know personally being in the area, but you can also just look at the roster on swimcloud, pull up the 400 IM and 1650 and see they are doing a ton of work (and I respect that kind of thing).
Steve also is very open about what they do, not super high volume but they work very hard.
I’m from the area too, wasn’t aware you are!
Pretty sure Maxime Rooney’s talked about the work PLS does. Also, just gotta look at the swimmers coming from PLS. I can’t remember the last time a 50 freestyler came out of Pleasanton, lol
He mentioned it in the podcast with Coleman.
I know Steve and I saw Luka say it on a podcast. 10 practices a week.
Idk what I was trying to say with my original comment, ignore it. Just thought it was funny they don’t listen their AM practices on the website.
This is true. However, we are not able to run an experiment to see how Luka would do swimming singles. But I agree, singles might be the correct formula from some swimmers doubles for others. There is no single correct path.
Also – huge factor is what are these kids doing outside of swimming?
Not doing doubles in highschool takes away opportunities, Cakir is an elite LC swimmer and could’ve made some US Junior worlds/pan PACs teams if his coach had him train a little more. These are opportunities you only get once as a younger guy.
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, but let’s just say you would be stunned if you looked at who was on the roster for World Juniors this past summer
For 200 Fly and 200 IM lol did not realize or expect that
One of the sneakiest and most versatile freshman in this year’s class. Don’t be surprised if he swims a variety of events at B1Gs/NCAAs (a la Alex Walsh) over the course of his college career. If we’re being honest, IU probably doesn’t need his breaststroke prowess from a team points perspective
Normalize not doing doubles in early high school
I think it’s really interesting that he and Liberty Clark basically said the same thing.
Ray has always gone after or recruited under trained HS athletes. Long time trend and something he’s always believed in.
Yes, and I love how well he develops them. I wish more college coaches had the talent and knowledge to be able to develop kids who haven’t already reached their potential. He’s tough, but if they can hang in there, they’re likely going to do really well.
Thats great and all if you can go 53.2 100 breast in high school without them.
Yes and no. If the double is just a way to keep volume high, then probably not always necessary for all.
BUT, there are a lot of different skills to work on and races to train for, and it can be hard to squeeze all of the high-quality, specific training into only 6 practices. So doing more practices gives more opportunities to have specific practices.
Normalize not drawing sweeping conclusions based on extraordinarily talented athletes. I feel like swimming is the only sport where we do this.
Joel Embiid started playing basketball seriously at 15 and was the best scorer in basketball for multiple years despite being constantly injured.
If most NBA players started playing at 15…most of them would not have made it to the NBA.
Paint for time getting him right
“I just like swimming fast and it’s fun”.
Some kids have that, some don’t.