The Duke Blue Devils have scored a commitment from Noah Stevens, an intriguing breaststroker/butterflier out of Brighton High School and the Victor Swim Club. Stevens won the 100 fly and added a 2nd place finish in the 100 breaststroke at New York’s State High School (NYSPHSAA) meet last spring. Those two events look to be his best chance of being a contributor to the Blue Devils, which is an odd, but possible program for a Conference Championship competition.
I am very excited to be a Blue Devil and know I have a great four years ahead of me!
Stevens’ short course times don’t tell the whole story. While he is overall a better SCY swimmer, his LCM 200 breaststroke showed a big improvement over the summer that suggests he could do much better than his current SCY best. His best events are:
- 100 Breaststroke: 55.93
- 100 Butterfly: 48.98
- 200 Breaststroke: 2:11.08, however his 2:24.33 (LCM) converts to a 2:06.4
Duke boasts the young NCAA season’s top 100 breaststroker at the moment, Peter Kropp, and had one other scorer in the 100 breaststroke (Dylan Pane) at last year’s ACC Championship; however they had only one scorer last year, in the C-Final of the 100 butterfly. Stevens has some catching up to do to be competitive in the ACC, where 55.1 and 48.0 were the slowest times to make it into the scoring heats in his best events. However, a school like Duke with limited scholarship funding for their men’s program needs to develop swimmers like Stevens to compete against their ACC foes.
As an official and fan, I have seen Mr Stevens compete dozens of times, ” NIAGARASWIMMER”, let’s give credit where credit is due…. An exemplary athlete and young man who has worked hard to get to this level, your comment about his technique is condescending and has no value or legs to stand on due to never being disqualified in the event……… Actions speak louder than words!
Saw Noah compete at his LSC championships in the 200 breast. He had a great first 150 but then his last 50 I noticed he would use butterfly kicks to propel himself in between his breastroke kicks and somehow was not caught. I’m sure something like that will be caught at the conference level in college so he needs to clean up his act
Duke is getting a class act in Noah Stevens. He is a great kid, both in and out of the pool. I look forward to watching him improve at Duke!
“where would you rather be than right here, right now/”
Looking forward to seeing big improvements from Mr. Steven’s; what a tremendous young man!