Following the conclusion of the 2019 NCAA season in April, the women-only Rutgers University swim team will head to Stockholm, Sweden, for the Swim Open Stockholm April 12th-15th.
It will be the first time an American team has attended the meet, according to the school.
“The vision for this program is that we’re building towards being one of the top programs in the country,” head coach Jon Maccoll told SwimSwam. “We think joining the Big Ten in 2014 and starting to get the funding behind that from a budget, scholarship, and support standpoint from the school – this really makes sense.”
Rutgers’ rosters traditionally feature a number of international swimmers from the likes of Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic, and South Africa. But the trip isn’t just about gaining international presence for recruiting purposes. It’s practical, too.
“We have a lot of international swimmers, we have a lot of American swimmers that are needing meter times,” Maccoll explained. “We looked at the Mesa Grand Prix [now the Pro Swim Series], and we looked at where we’re located geographically, and just thought ‘we can get to Stockholm for the same price we can get to Mesa,’ and we just feel that this meet is a better fit for the kids that we have on the team.”
And in terms of balancing academics with international travel, the timing of the meet is such that athletes will miss less time than they would have to travel domestically to Mesa. The Stockholm Open runs Friday-Monday, as opposed to the Pro Swim Series, which runs Wednesday-Saturday,
“When we go to Mesa, it’s about a six-and-a-half hour flight, but being on the East Coast, it’s only about seven-and-a-half to Sweden,” Maccoll said. “So from a travel standpoint, it’s about the same. The one difference is that we actually miss less class time in Stockholm, which is really important to our school and how strong the academics are here.”
The plan is for everyone on the team (who has the cuts, shown below) to travel. Because the meet is so close to final exams, Rutgers has implemented a minimum GPA requirement, which Maccoll doesn’t believe should limit the travel team much, if at all.
Swim Open Stockholm LCM Qualifying Standards
| Event | Women | Men |
| 50 free | 28.06 | 25.15 |
| 100 free | 1:00.52 | 54.43 |
| 200 free | 2:12.28 | 2:00.29 |
| 400 free | 4:41.08 | 4:19.52 |
| 800 free | 9:27.67 | 8:45.03 |
| 1500 free | 18:19.40 | 17:15.79 |
| 50 breast | 35.57 | 31.88 |
| 100 breast | 1:17.82 | 1:10.20 |
| 200 breast | 2:50.71 | 2:35.10 |
| 50 back | 32.46 | 29.35 |
| 100 back | 1:09.50 | 1:03.31 |
| 200 back | 2:31.20 | 2:19.70 |
| 50 fly | 29.81 | 26.9 |
| 100 fly | 1:07.13 | 59.96 |
| 200 fly | 2:33.73 | 2:20.47 |
| 200 IM | 2:30.68 | 2:16.99 |
| 400 IM | 5:25.58 | 5:01.24 |
In terms of timing it with conference and NCAA Championships tapers and training, Maccoll says he’ll work with swimmers individually to figure out their goals.
“We have athletes here where their first priority is to become a pharmacists, we have people here who want to be doctors, but we also have people where, they’re getting an education, but they’re on their national teams or working toward their national teams, and with Tokyo coming up in 2020, it’ll be probably a little different for a few of our athletes that have a real chance at representing their country in Tokyo.”
In the past, the meet has had national teams from Germany, Poland, Norway, and Finland, England, and more attend.
“I’d be willing to be bet we’re probably one of a handful of teams, if not the first, to go to Europe during the season as part of a full-team event, unless somebody did it as part of a training trip or something like that,” Maccoll added.
And in his first year as head coach, was Maccoll hesitant at all to plan a trip like this?
“Absolutely not,” he said, noting that Athletic Director Patrick Hobbs gave his support. “The athletics support from our staff has been amazing, and this meet makes perfect sense for us from a vision standpoint, and it is absolutely the next step in increasing the athlete experience in terms of things we’re able to offer here at Rutgers.”
As an alum, seeing this makes me excited for the future of the team (and a bit jealous)! I wish the team had this kind of support back in my day. Enjoy the trip ladies!
Seems like awesome trip and great opportunity for program. Might attract some recruits too. Good luck on upcoming season.
On a side note, maybe they can bring back Men’s program with all the extra $ they have to support this trip.
While I’m all for bringing back the men’s team (I was on the team when the men were cut), the money they will spend on this trip will be a drop in the bucket for what it would cost to support a men’s program.
I cant even start to come to a number in terms of how much it costs to support a program…I just get sad when I go to swim meets at Rutgers or U of Md (which have great facilities) and they don’t have teams.
We actually did a story on this in a past issue of SwimSwam Magazine, complete with a sample budget for teams at different levels. Power 5 takes about $3.1 million (high 5.3 million, low 1.3 million) for a combined program. D1 mid Major is about $1.1 million on average, D2 is about 570k on average, 219k for D3, with a wide range in all of those groups (though all D1 power 5 combined teams spend more than all D3 combined teams).
Braden, do you break out the cost for single gender teams to know how much adding a men’s team would cost if a women’s team with facility and coach is already in place?
We didn’t for that particular story. I’m sure we could get that data, though it would be less based in reality and more based in ‘guesstimate,’ which makes it tricky to do given the wide range in spending that exists even within divisions, or in the case of D1, sub-divisions.
Whether facility costs increase or not would vary widely by school, because at some schools, the pools are owned by athletics, and at some, they’re owned by rec sports. If they’re owned by rec sports, adding a men’s team means more pool time, means more costs, so there’s not much economies of scale savings there.
Even if it’s athletics-owned, there are also opportunity costs to be considered, ala ‘does adding… Read more »
Yes at Rutgers (and UMD if I recall correctly) the pool was owned by the rec department.
I feel the same way when I visit both facilities. As I said above, I was on the team when the men were cut at Rutgers and it was devastating to the women’s team that was left as well. We lost quite a few years of forward progress as a program because of it. It is mind boggling that UMD has a pool of that quality that only club swimming and rec swimmers use. What a waste.
Super Cool! Welcome Rutgers!
At least for the schools that have funding allowing them to do this, I think this should be the new norm. Great travel and bonding experience, possible recruiting opportunities, and the unique experience of an international meet that very few college swimmers will ever get to enjoy. Well worth the money, and every program in the nation should look to this for inspiration.
This is awesome!