National Letter of Intent ‘Regular Period’ Begins Wednesday

Signing a Letter of Intent this week? Send us a photo to [email protected], and we’ll make sure you get some recognition either on SwimSwam or across our social media platforms.

Now that NCAA’s are over, and coaches have had a couple of weeks to spend reintroducing themselves to their families, it’s time for things to heat back up again in recruiting. The NCAA’s ‘regular signing’ period opens on Wednesday, April 16th for all sports, meaning that high school seniors in swimming can officially begin signing National Letters of Intent to swim for Division I programs.

These letters are a commitment to swim for the ascribed program for one year, and for that program to give the athlete the agreed-upon scholarship.

In swimming, we’d estimate that over 90% of the top 200 or so American recruits sign their letters in the fall, but that still leaves a handful of athletes who have a good shot at NCAA qualifications in their careers left to make their firm commitments. Every year, there’s a few swimmers who hold out for the spring in hopes of putting up some big times at their State or Sectional Championship meets. Perhaps the shining examples of what you can find in the spring is Breeja Larson, who didn’t really get serious about swimming until late in her high school career in Arizona. She was a spring signee to Texas A&M, and she would go on to win three NCAA Championships, break multiple American Records, and earn a spot on the 2012 Olympic team.

One place to really follow are the international side, where many commitments have been agreed upon since many countries’ school years ended in December. The caveat here is that actually getting internationals to campus is not as much of a guarantee as Americans, so coaches will often keep these close-to-chest until the athlete takes their seat in their first class in the fall.

The other place to look is mid-majors; thing programs outside of the top 15, programs who only sent 1-2 swimmers to NCAA’s. Especially on the women’s side, these teams tend to enter the spring with a little more scholarship money on hand (when they’re fully funded, that is) and so they can sometimes snap up recruits that will place in the top-end of those school’s classes. They may not be the Missy Franklin, Ryan Murphy, winning NCAA titles as a freshman type, but they can have big impacts for those programs at the conference level immediately.

Then there will be of course a smattering of signings with the big players, the Cals, the Texases, the Georgias; most of those programs get their work done in the fall, however.

The signing period for the 2014-2015 season runs through August 1.