The 2024 Texas Invite saw lots of drops, and even a few American records. One of the biggest group wide drops was seen in the men’s 200 butterfly group with 9 of 10 athletes dropping time, some for the first time in more than a year. The biggest change this particular group has seen this season? Bob Bowman’s training.
Bob Bowman took over the Texas head coach position from Eddie Reese this season, and he has been the primary coach behind four of the last six 200m butterfly Olympic Gold medalists. Three of those medals came from Michael Phelps (2004, 2008, 2016), and one came from former ASU swimmer and 2024 NCAA champion Leon Marchand (2024).
Ten Texas men swam the 200 fly at this year’s Texas Invite. Nine of them saw new best times.
| Name | 2024 Texas Invite Time | Pre-Season Best Time | Date of Best Time | Difference |
| Logan Walker | 1:41.01 | 1:45.04 | 11/17/23 | -4.03 |
| Ryan Branon | 1:41.52 | 1:42.79 | 02/26/24 | -1.27 |
| Coby Carrozza | 1:42.10 | 1:42.96 | 02/03/22 | -0.86 |
| Cooper Lucas | 1:42.72 | 1:43.44 | 03/03/23 | -0.72 |
| Holden Smith | 1:43.15 | 1:44.25 | 03/01/23 | -1.10 |
| Alec Filipovic | 1:43.40 | 1:43.43 | 02/29/24 | -0.03 |
| Landon D’Ariano | 1:44.76 | 1:45.05 | 03/22/24 | -0.29 |
| Luke Stibrich | 1:45.85 | 1:46.28 | 12/08/23 | -0.43 |
| Spencer Aurnou-Rhees | 1:46.86 | 1:45.90 | 02/24/23 | +0.96 |
| George Flanders | 1:47.84 | 1:48.91 | 11/17/23 | -1.07 |
Logan Walker, a sophomore, had the largest drop coming in at just over 4 seconds faster than his pre-season best time. He swam the event at Texas last year, going his best time at last year’s Invite, and adding time to go 1:45.77 at last year’s Big 12s. He went 1:41.70 at the Texas vs IU meet about a month prior to the Texas Invite, dropping the first 3.3 seconds of his total 4 second drop so far under Bowman.
Walker is no stranger to enormous time drops over a season. His Junior year of high school, he went from 1:51.76 to 1:48.39 in less than a month from October 15 to November 6th of 2021. He ended that season at his pre-college best of 1:46.51 in March. He only swam one 200 butterfly his senior year of high school, in September of 2022, and went 1:49.64.
Ryan Branon, Holden Smith, both juniors, and George Flanders, a sophomore, also all dropped over a second from their previous bests, and all three swam the event in college last season, though Smith’s best time came from his pre-college days.
Texas also had a trio of freshmen in the event who dropped. Cooper Lucas, Landon D’Ariano, and Luke Stibrich dropped 7 tenths, 3 tenths, and 4 tenths respectively in their first ever college midseason meet.
The one outlier in the data was junior Spencer Aurnou-Rhees. Aurnou-Rhees had a very good freshman season back in 2022-2023, and swam the event at the 2023 Big 12 Championships, going his current best time of 1:46.86. He did not swim the event a single time last season, opting to swim the 100 free on the final day of the Texas Invite instead.
off topic, but doesn’t Minn invite start this week? Think that is last big mid season invite. Aren’t we all waiting to see what Cal does?
That 2 fly depth is unreal.
How many guys to a lane do they train with in SCY? I always hate doing fly with other people in my lane. These guys only take 5-7 strokes/lap, so if 1-2 of them are disrupted to avoid getting clocked, that’s hard.
I believe a 50m pool has 24 SCY lanes when you set it up as SCY. Assuming both the men and women swim together, I’d guess 3 to a lane. Some programs will also use their diving well. So it’s possibly if the sprinters are using the diving well, they might free up some extra space in the big pool.
I doubt it’s an issue for them. If everyone is going past halfway every time on their underwaters, then there won’t ever be a collision in SCY. That may be a big “if” on a lot of club teams, but in a program like Texas I’d expect 12.5 yards to be the bare minimum expectation for the butterflyers.
Curious if the male sprinters are making similar % drops or nah? Gould def is, but it seems like it may have been work he did over summer?
I’ve heard him discuss some of his principles of butterfly training & underwater work at all the coaches clinics he is the keynote speaker at. Looks like application of those principles in daily training has already had an impact in just a few months!
Love me some big drops
Did the UVa women drop time in mid season as well?
You tried this yesterday and got downvoted about 33-6. Give it a break.
This passive aggressive non-question is actually so passive that I don’t know what point you’re trying to passive-aggressively make. Can you elaborate in a more direct way?
This is objectively around 1 big drop right? Walker dropped 4 seconds, that’s huge! Branon, Smith, Flanders dropped 1 second +. That’s a nice drop, but not that big. Arnou-Rheese about the same. It’s great most of their team dropped time in this event at mid-season, but they still may score 0 points at NCAAs. Or maybe they’ll score a few. We have to wait a few months to really celebrate this.
Dropping 1 sec at this level and time of year is a pretty big deal, even if they were fully tapered. Especially when many of them havent gone the good time in years
about decade+ ago, eddie had six horns 1 fly finalist, and button up those ncaa.
200 flyers look like are taking similar route…believe they’re pretty versatile in other events?!
These guys aren’t close to going 6 up. Nor 1 up really. Long, long way to go.
I think the upside for them in this is one up one down.
Does bob train any of the women? Sticklen and Pash very fast 200 fly’ers, and Looney, and Smith in the pro group