Tennessee high school state champ Walker Higgins out of Tennessee Aquatics has verbally committed to the Georgia Bulldogs for 2016.
Higgins will be a senior this coming fall, looking to defend his 200 free and 500 free titles for SMHEA Swim Team, the umbrella banner for the Smoky Mountain Home Education Association.
The recruiting season for Higgins’ graduating class opened just over a week ago, but Higgins has already found his future home with the Georgia Bulldogs of the SEC.
Higgins is a great freestyler from sprints through mid-distance, though he’s definitely most impressive in the 200 and 500.
Higgins’ Top Times
- 500 free – 4:23.13
- 200 free – 1:37.35
- 100 free – 45.52
- 50 free – 20.81
Though he’ll need to improve his 50 and 100 times to be a player there for Georgia, the Bulldogs have been desperate for sprint freestylers on their relays lately, and have taken to using non-sprint-specialists to fill out relay lineups. This year, for example, breaststroker Nic Fink and IMer Gunnar Bentz were often legs of the Georgia free relays.
Higgins competes for Tennessee Aquatics and has big meet experience in the club realm as well. He was third at last year’s long course Junior Nationals in the 200 free (1:50.68 LCM) and also third at Winter Juniors in the 500 free.
He’s been a very fast riser thus far in his career. As a freshman, he was only 1:44.1 in the 200 and 4:41.9 in the 500. As a junior, he dropped to 1:38.8/4:32.7 and is now 1:37.3/4:23.1. If he can continue that type of improvement curve, Higgins could turn out to be a major player in the SEC beginning in the fall of 2016.
Congrats Walker…