The North Carolina Tar Heel men made huge moves in the past three days as they got verbal commitments from three potential stars.
The biggest grab was Ben Colley, who comes from neighboring Virginia (home of the University of Virginia, with whom UNC has one of the most heated college swimming rivalries). He’s pretty versatile and excells at the 100/200 back (49.59/1:50.89) as well as the 100/200 fly (49.81/1:48.26).
What’s interesting is that out of those two, the best are probably the 100 back and 200 fly, which doesn’t mesh up too well for training (his IM times haven’t been as elite). Unless he tries to live by the maniacal Teresa-Crippen model, my guess is that he’ll tend towards the butterflies (hard to ignore that 1:48). Colley is also a decent sprint freestyler (21.2/46.0).
The second recruit to be highlighted is Sam Lewis out of the Dynamo Swim Club in Atlanta, who are the defending Junior National Champions. He is in the very same mold as Colley as a great backstroker (49.63/1:50.98) and butterflier (49.62/2:01.42). He too has some sprint free potential (20.77 in the 50). Because of that 200, I see Lewis as more of a backstroker, which would be a good compliment to Colley.
In neither of these cases, though, is the swimmer necessarily going to be locked in conventionally as a “backstroker” or a “butterflier”. North Carolina coach Rich DeSelm has become very fond of these backstroke/butterfly types, specifically the recently-graduated Tommy Wyher. What we saw with Wyher is that he did the 100 backstroke/butterfly double on day 2 of NCAA’s, and scratch the 200 back to focus on sprint free relays. There’s a good chance that one of these two guys will fill that role next year (Lewis seems the better fit to go that route).
The third verbal they’ve recently received is from Canadian Matt Kwatyra, who is much less similar to the two previously mentioned. His best in LCM have been 2:04.83/4:23.15, which convert into yards at 1:47.0/3:45.5 and should qualify him for the NCAA Championships. It’s unlikely that he’ll immediately be as fast as those conversions, he’s been much better long course than short course, but projects as an NCAA scorer at some point in his career.
