Texas has picked up its second international recruit of the week as British sprinter Calvin Fry announced his commitment to the Longhorns via Instagram on Thursday. Fry will join the Longhorns in the fall of 2025.
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🚨Here we go…
Super excited to say I’ve committed to be a longhorn in 2025. Massive thanks to @coach_bowman , @erik_posegay and @coachmaida for this opportunity.
Let’s go champ!🤘🤘 #hookem
The Longhorn men are rebuilding fast under Director of Swimming Bob Bowman, though one area where they remain weak—relative to their biggest rivals on the national stage—is pure freestyle sprinters. They’ve begun to address that with a verbal commitment from Austin Carpenter who owns 19.94/43.83/1:36.21 bests entering his junior year of high school. But Carpenter won’t arrive until fall 2026—Fry arrives the year before and therefore can help the Longhorns reverse their fortunes in the discipline that much earlier.
| Event | LCM | SCM |
| 50 free | 22.51 | 21.45 |
| 100 free | 49.24 | 47.11 |
| 200 free | 1:49.90 | 1:44.96 |
These personal bests mean Fry will greatly enhance the Longhorns’ sprint group and he still has another year training with his club at Loughborough University—itself a hub for professional swimmers—to improve.
After swimming a personal best of 22.70 in the LCM 50 free in March, Fry popped a 22.51 at the 2024 European Championships. He also broke 50 seconds in the LCM 100 freestyle for the first time this year; he came into 2024 with a personal best of 50.50, which he undercut to 50.06 in March and then 49.24 in April. He swam his first LCM 200 freestyle best in two years in April as well, dropping 2.94 seconds with a 1:49.90 at British Championships.
Texas scored its first big international recruit of the week on Tuesday, when Worlds medallist Ksawery Masiuk announced he will join the team for this season’s spring semester. Masiuk is primarily a backstroke sprinter, but could also help the Longhorns in sprint free/fly, depending on how he adjusts to yards.
Texas currently has four international athletes on their roster and adding Masiuk in the spring gives them five. Though last season’s Texas roster had more international athletes than a typical Eddie Reese roster, Bowman is growing the number of international swimmers to a level beyond that of the last administration’s traditional roster construction. Quickly, the Longhorns’ roster will resemble the shape the Arizona State roster established for itself under Bowman.
When you recruit a kid you need to make sure that kid respects his mother, is a good student, and will mesh with the team dynamic. All of these are just as important as how talented he is in the pool. It can be difficult at times knowing these things well when you are recruiting an international kid. Hope this international flavor works out but I doubt Texas alumni are too thrilled about it.
LOL what?
Sounds like the poster knows something about the kid we do not. Doesn’t matter. Texas will do whatever it takes to win.
I would love to see an article showing the number of Americans in the 2025 class going to each of the top 15 men’s programs. Between roster cuts, foreign recruiting, and transfers there’s not alot of hope for American high school seniors for the next couple years.
Two thoughts:
1) international athletes usually need more scholarship money, and college coaches are still choosing them. Maybe as a concerned club coach you should be concerned about why you’re not better-preparing your athletes for NCAA swimming?
2) You’re being alarmist. Cal is 9/41 internationals. Texas is 5/X. Florida is 13/38. Ohio State is 7/39. There is PLENTY of hope for American high school seniors. If there are 25-30 spots for American high school seniors, that’s roughly the top 125-or-so boys in each class are going to a top 15 program. That’s pretty dang good. That’s way more than basketball. Maybe that’s why more basketball programs are forced to be good.
Having the top recruits spread out to… Read more »
41 swimmers on a Men’s Roster for Cal? 39 swimmers on a Men’s Roster for Ohio St? You can kiss those numbers goodbye in the post-House world. There will be much smaller swim teams at these programs in the future, and if half the spaces go for International Swimmers…
You’re not understanding these European foreign kids are usually 2-3 years older than a high school kid. So it’s not the club coaches fault!
I don’t get fussed about the international recruiting like some people do, but what I think what will be interesting is whether Bob continues that after some success. There are two reasons to take international recruits: they can elevate your program faster when you can’t recruit as well nationally, and if you don’t take them, they’ll score points for someone else who will take them.
Ed was really the only guy at that level who didn’t recruit internationally. And between his recruiting / coaching abilities, and the fact he had better facilities before most did, he was able to recruit the best from Texas and the rest of the country without having to go internationally. I don’t know if a… Read more »
The Texas superteam mercenaries coming in to steal some rings is eerily similar to “king” James colluding behind his organizations back and erecting super teams with other top 5-15 players in the league at the time (and then failing miserably almost every time)
4 rings in 21 years is laughable enough but when you dig into it further it’s even worse:
2012: shortened season, superteam ring with top 5 player in the league Dwade and top 12 player in the league Bosh
2013: Ray Allen miracle shot and unprecedented spurs choke
2016: game 5 draymond suspended, bogut hurt, curry foul trouble game 6 and injured. Also his teammate was averaging 29 a game and outplaying Stefraud McFlurry. Not bad for… Read more »
Sir this is a swimming forum
A fundamental difference here from your somewhat oddly slanted basketball example is that the swimmers in this scenario are not coming to UT to ‘steal rings’ but rather to train with other great swimmers who share similar goals of excellence and improvement and to learn and be mentored by coaches whom they think would best foster their development. At an excellent school in a cool environment. And presumably also to try to win team titles. So referring to them as “superteam mercenaries” seems frankly ridiculous
Another day, another elite recruit!
Everyone thought bob would come and clear house. No he’s recruiting heavy and next year will clear house
Interesting that Eddie recruited almost exclusively from the US. He had a couple that competed for other countries but they often went to US high schools. Bob has made a big change. I have no problems with it. Just interesting to see.
The thing is, is that Eddie didn’t really recruit though.
I thought football was bad, but NCAA swimming is being ruined by coaches who care nothing about developing student athletes (Bowman, Durden leading the charge). Fry will be 21 when he arrives on campus for what should be his Senior year of college – yet he’ll be a freshman. He’ll likely do 1 maybe 2 years with no focus on academics, but using the NCAA scholarship system to pay for what is really pro training. Henveaux at Cal never even had a major! Others simply come for the spring semester to compete. Where does it end? I’m a big supporter of international athletes participating in the NCAA, but my respect is reserved for those coaches who recruit athletes who want… Read more »
Europeans are usually over 19 years old in their first year of uni, which has to do with European secondary education being systematically or optionally longer. In Hungary for example the “foreign language focused secondary education” lasts for 5 years instead of 4, but in Czechia 5 years is the norm. I know this doesn’t apply to Fry specifically, just clearing things up.
It’s 18 in most of Britain (17 in Scotland)
Not sure whether Fry has already studied all/part of a degree – it says he’s been training at Loughborough
He’s taking Uni exams in the next few weeks, so still in school
Well said.
Very well said. I completely agree, even as a Cal fan.
International recruits like Bjorn Seeliger should be welcomed with open arms.
One semester mercenaries like Lucas Henveaux go against the spirit of college athletics. Nothing personal against him, but the system allowing him to come for one semester just to swim.
Henveaux was going to join for the full year. He disclosed in the SwimSwam interview that his passport was lost when applying for a visa, thus complicating things and resulted in the mid semester addition rather than joining in August.
It never grows old!
Seeing the Bowman magic continue to work making this year 24-25 a very exciting time to support the Longhorns.
And the following two seasons, Wow!
Welcome to the 40 acres and the land of freedom
The recruiting is great, it’s huge, but he’s gotta work his magic in the pool. Given his success at ASU, you’d think he’s got it down, but he did have a subpar stretch at Michigan a while back, and it’s possible Herbie had a lot to do with ASU. Let’s see.
The recent successes with Leon, Regan and Hubert suggest that he is doing something right.
I think the Michigan experience was a mix of adjusting to the college scene with recruiting, NCAA rules, etc. and also he was training MP for 8 golds in Beijing. That’s a lot of juggle when you haven’t been in that position before. His work since then has been pretty solid.
Herbie obviously had a lot to do with ASU which is why he was in that position, but Bowman was the captain of that ship.
We’re gonna find out. If you believe Herbie was the sprint coach, his contribution would have been huge in ASU’s NCAA success.