Brazil’s Caio Dini and Tessa Thull of Fort Collins, CO have both given verbals to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for the upcoming 2014-15 season.
Caio Dini of Sao Paolo Brazil is a sprint specialist whose 50/100/200 free and 100 back will be an asset to the Rebels. In May he won a Brazilian junior national title in the 100 free with a 51.27 (although his fastest long course time is 50.89).
He has short course meters times of 22.51/49.32/1:49.22 in the free events which convert roughly into 20.3/44.4/1:38.3 in yards. His 100 back of 55.04 translates to about a 49.5. Each those times are right up there in the top 5 or so which means Dini should be a big point scorer for the Rebels.
Tessa Thull, a member of USA Swimming’s Scholastic All-America Team, is a senior at Fort Collins High School and swims for the Fort Collins Area Swim Team. Thull competed in IM and back in high school, finishing thirteenth in the former and seventeenth in the latter at the CHSAA State Championships 5A meet this past February.
Thull’s best short course 200/400 IM times are 2:04/4:22. In long course she’s been 2:25/4:58. In addition she goes 57 in the 100 back, and 2:04 in both the 200 back and the 200 fly. Thull competed in the medley events at Summer Juniors in Irvine this past August. She is a solid swimmer with multiple strengths; Thull should make an immediate impact on the Rebel squad.
Guess UNLV is going back to their old ways of recruiting foreigners and continue to offer no money to Americans. Too bad these foreigners can’t do a visit or talk to the current foreigners before they come. Then they would know how unhappy they are swimming for that head coach. Instead they get a load of crap from the assistants who call them. Oh well.
As a current UNLV Swimmer I would like to know where you are getting this information from. UNLV is bringing in many foreigners because swimming is now a world wide sport. The people that swim for our team are very happy with our coaching staff, especially the foreigners which is the reason why almost every single one of our swimmers finish all four years of competition and transferring away from UNLV is almost unheard of.