The Results Are In: Find Out Who Won SwimSwam’s 2022 Commonwealth Games Draft

2022 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

• Friday, July 29 – Wednesday, August 3, 2022
• Sandwell Aquatic Center, Birmingham, England
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central
• Results

Thanks to Justine Fedde for helping analyze results:

Prior to the start of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, SwimSwam’s Braden Keith, Coleman Hodges, Retta Race, and Ben Dornan conducted the SwimSwam fantasy draft.  Each of the four drafted a total of eight swimmers.

The four also participated in the same type of fantasy draft for the 2022 World Championships. See those results here. Unlike the Worlds draft where each team had a pick from Europe, North American, South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa as well as two additional wild card picks, here the picks were open to any country. Teams were limited to two swimmers from a single country though.

The goal was to create a team that gathered the most points using the point designations below:

Scoring System for the 2022 SwimSwam Fantasy Draft

• Individual Gold Medal: 6 points
• Individual Silver Medal: 5 points
• Individual Bronze Medal: 4 points
• Relay Gold Medal, Swam in Finals: 4 points
• Relay Silver Medal, Swam in Finals: 3 points
• Relay Bronze Medal, Swam in Finals: 2 points
• Any relay medal, Only Swam in Prelims: 1 point
• Made an Individual Final, Didn’t Medal: 1 point
• Individual World Record Bonus: 3 points
• Relay World Record Bonus: 1 point
• DQ: -2 points

So Who Won?

Using this scoring system, Braden captured the victory as his team scored 126 points overall. Finishing closely behind Braden was Retta who scored 124 points. Coleman finished third with 113 points and Ben took fourth with 106 points. Scoring the most points in a singular day was Retta on day 2 as her team scored 35 points.

Highlights

Braden (126 points)

Braden picked up his second win of the year here after winning the Worlds draft earlier this summer. He was able to do so even though his sixth round draft pick Daniel Jervis scratched midway through the meet due to lingering effects from COVID-19. Notably, Jervis was the top seed in the men’s 1500 free which if he captured a win there, he would have scored Braden another six points.

Braden’s first round pick Kaylee McKeown brought in the most points with 29 points. She was the third highest scoring individual overall. McKeown had the highest individual scoring day of any athlete on any team on any singular day as she scored 11 points on day 4 of the meet with her win in the 200 back and second place finish in the 200 IM.

Braden had a consistent scorer with fourth-round pick Maggie MacNeil who scored at least one points on all six days of the meet.

Retta (124 points)

Retta’s first round pick Emma McKeon was a huge jackpot. McKeon was the highest scoring swimmer of the meet with 37 points. Interestingly enough, even though McKeon was the highest scorer, she was projected to score even more based on the psych sheets with 42 points. McKeon consistently scored throughout the meet, scoring at least 4 points on all of the six days.

Retta’s second round pick Duncan Scott had a huge meet. Although only projected to score 15 points based on the psych sheet, Scott rocketed to score 25 points. Scott was the only other swimmer to have a double digit points total besides McKeown in a single day. Scott scored 10 points on day 2 as he won the 200 free and finished third in the 400 IM.

Coleman (113 points)

Although Coleman finished third, he actually had the most amount of swimmers outperforming their psych sheet projected points. Five out of Coleman’s eight swimmers scored more points than their psych sheet points.

Coleman’s second round pick of Tom Dean was a huge pick up as Dean scored 28 points, eight more than his psych sheet points of 20. Notably, Dean was the fourth highest points scorer of the draft, despite being drafted in the second round.

Seventh round pick for Coleman Lewis Clareburt scored a whopping 16 points, 10 more than his expected six based off the psych sheets. Clareburt picked up wins in both the men’s 200 fly and 400 IM scoring six points in each.

Ben (106 points)

Although Ben finished last, Ben had what could be considered the “steal of the draft” with Summer McIntosh. McIntosh scored 25 points and was drafted in the third round. Despite being a third round pick, McIntosh was tied with the sixth most points of the draft.

In addition to McIntosh being a key component, Ben’s highest scorer was his first round pick Mollie O’Callaghan who scored 33 points. That made her the second highest scorer of the draft only behind Emma McKeon.

MISSES

This section identifies places where our draftees performed slightly worse than what their ceiling was at this meet. This is not to disparage the swimmers, but just to identify where a certain selection didn’t quite pan out. All of these swimmers are incredible athletes, but the limitations to who was available as well as who to pick from certain countries make drafting difficult. 

Braden

• As mentioned above, Daniel Jervis withdrew from the meet mid-way due to lingering effects of COVID-19
• After only swimming relays at Worlds, Maggie MacNeil was seeded to score 26 points here but only scored 17, although she did swim a Games record in the women’s 100 fly as she won the event in a 56.36
• Adam Peaty came back after dealing with a foot injury that caused him to withdraw from Worlds. Here he was expected to score 19 points but only scored 7. Peaty missed the podium in the 100 breast for the first time in almost a decade, but persevered to win gold in the 50 breast

Retta

• As mentioned above, Emma McKeon scored five less points than she was seeded to score
• Retta’s last round pick Katerine Savard was -6 from her psych sheet points

Coleman

• Almost all of Coleman’s team improved upon their psych sheet points
• Mary Sophie Harvey was seeded to score 15 points but only scored 6 with four of those coming in relays

Ben

• Luke Greenbank and Josh Liendo scored less than their psych sheet seeded points but were also slightly off their best. Both men were slower here than they were at 2022 Worlds.
• Rebecca Smith was seeded to score 21 points but missed the double digit mark scoring seven. All seven of Smith’s points came from swimming in relay finals that medaled.
• Unfortunately for Ben, only three swimmers that were drafted scored more than 10 less points than they were seeded to score and two of them were on his team

THE UN-DRAFTED

Not all of the “top scorers” were drafted. Most of this was due to the two per country on each team limitation that was put in place during the draft. As a result, Australia and England took the top four spots in undrafted points here.

Strongest Team of Undrafted Swimmers

1. Kiah Melverton AUS 19
2. James Wilby ENG 18
3. Zac Stubblety-Cook AUS 18
4. Brodie Paul Williams ENG 15
5. Ross Murdoch SCO 11
6. Katie Shanahan SCO 9
7. Javier Acevedo CAN 9
8. Andrew Jeffcoat NZL 7

Total Undrafted Top Points: 106

With all of the top undrafted swimmers combined, they would have scored 106 points in the draft. Notably, this team also follows the two-per-country rule as there are no more than 2 swimmers from three different countries. Six out of these eight swimmers outperformed their psych sheet points as, based on the psych sheet, the team was seeded to score only 50 points. Zac Stubblety-Cook was the second highest swimmer with scored psych sheets that were not drafted and matched his psych sheet points with 18.

Ranking All Athletes Who Scored At Least 1 Point