The NCAA transfer portal closes today, April 26th for women’s swimming and diving. Roughly 191 names have entered the portal since the start of the 2024 calendar year.
The portal opened for women’s swimming and diving a week after NCAA invites were announced meaning the portal opened on March 13, 2024 and closes today. It is important to note that there are a few exceptions included in this window including graduate transfers and athletes who go through a coaching change (such as Arizona State who has about an extra week as athletes are given a 30 day window with a coaching change).
Since the beginning of 2024, 191 swimmers and divers have entered the portal including 40 of those being graduate transfers.
Some of the biggest names to have entered the portal include:
- Regan Smith (Stanford)
- Miriam Sheehan (NC State)
- Keelan Cotter (NC State)
- Nicole Maier (Miami-OH), grad transfer
- Miranda Grana (Texas A&M)
Other notable names/groups in the portal include:
- Athletes from Boston College
- Athletes from George Washingon University
- Athletes from Loyola Marymount
It is important to note that some of these athletes will not end up transferring. Entering the portal does not require one to transfer. Instead, it allows for one to begin communication with other potential coaches.
Compared to many other sports, the portal was relatively quiet for women’s swimming and diving. For example, women’s basketball player Lucy Olsen announced she will transfer from Villanova to Iowa. Fellow women’s basketball player Hailey Van Lith is transferring from LSU to TCU.
In men’s basketball, Duke currently has seven players in the portal with two already deciding where they will be heading. Another example of the portal madness for men’s basketball includes the newly hired coach for Michigan Dusty May already securing five transfers over five days. The men’s basketball transfer window was open for a week and already had over 900 entries at the time.
NCAA football has also seen a lot of action in the portal this offseason. Some of the biggest names include Iowa quarterback Deacon Hill, Colorado running back Dylan Edwards, and former Alabama safety Caleb Downs who transferred to Ohio State. To show the growth in the portal in recent years, in 2022 about 1,200 football players entered the portal. This past season, over 2,000 players entered the portal.
Miranda Grana in the portal? Huge pickup for a program.
Kentucky cleaning up in the portal, grabbed two girls from Arkansas and Towson and Chris Nagy from Minnesota all in the last 24 hours
They lost basically the entire men’s basketball team to the portal so karma?
Minor correction, Caleb Downs is a “safety” not wide receiver
Do we think Regan swims in NCAA? I wonder if she will do a similar thing to Erica Sullivan, and spend her final days in the NCAA and have fun competing for college with less of a long course focus after Paris.
Genuine curiosity – why would she enter transfer portal if she didn’t want to race NCAA? Couldn’t she just move to wherever she wanted to train as a pro?
One compliance person told me that if you have eligibility remaining, you have to enter the portal to enroll in another NCAA school academically – even if not racing with their varsity.
But the rules are pretty nuanced and niche so that doesn’t necessarily apply to every situation.
So no ASU women in portal???
They have 30 days from when Herbie was named head coach to go in, so a few more days left for them. With the relative lack of success compared to the men and any commitment to Texas meaning they’d have a different head coach (and probably no scholarship money) I’m not surprised by it.
TAMU needs to finalize this coaching search, as well as any resulting staff changes, as soon as possible, or swimmers (men or women) are going to have incentive to enter the portal. Even if that is only to preserve an exit plan, in case the swimmer does not like the upcoming changes, it’s never good to have any of your good swimmers (much less the best swimmer, as with Miranda) in the portal for any reason.
It will be inconvenient timing for them, but once a new head coach is announced they’ll have an exception to enter the portal anyway (if the current head coaches leave)
That only applies for the men – the woman had to enter the portal by Friday since Steve already announced his retirement some time ago.