Jack Bauerle has officially made it clear that he and the Georgia Bulldogs are not ready to roll-over and hand the Cal women the next decade’s worth of NCAA Championships.
That’s because over the weekend, Georgia earned a verbal committment from Canadian Chantal Vanlandeghem of the Manta Swim Club in Winnipeg, who from a team-scoring perspective is probably the hugest commit of the group.
Vanlandeghem is a pure speedster, which she probably owes partially to her Dutch roots (she’s a Netherlands-Canada dual citizen).
She is the Canadian National Age Group Record holder in the 50 free for both the 13-14 and 15-17 age groups, with a long course best of 25.05. That time was swum at the summer’s World Championships, where she was the 5th-best swimmer in prelims to qualify through to the semifinals. That time converts to a 21.82 (!), and she is equally as good in short course.
This means that, as a freshman, she will already be contending for top-three spots in that race at NCAA’s and have an Nationals automatic-qualifying time. She’s probably has about as much speed as anybody we’ve ever seen headed into NCAA competition.
In the 100 free, she’s got a long course best of 55.07 (48.13 in yards), which already shows an ever-so-slight dropoff. Bauerle’s job will be to take all of that rocket fuel and channel it for slightly longer burns. If he can do that, then Vanlandeghem probably challenges Liz Pelton, Jasmine Tosky and Rachel Bootsma as the most valuable recruit in this class.
What will really fit her in great with Bauerle’s program is that he loves freestylers who can contribute in other strokes on medley relays. Because of her athleticism, Vanandeghem also puts out impressive sprint fly (1:00.43 LCM) and back (1:02.11) times that are also near the top of the class.
Amongst her other accomplishments are three medals (one silver and two bronze) from the 2011 FINA Junior World Championships.
Looking at the Georgia women’s class so far (ranks according to collegeswimming.com):
#7 Chantal Vanlandeghem (Sprint)
#12 Hali Flickinger (IM/Middle Distance)
Unranked Brittany MacLean (Free) – would be about a top-10 recruit
And amongst those three, the two Canadians are probably underrated by the ranking system because they don’t have yards times. On paper, that’s still not quite as good as Cal’s Pelton-Bootsma-Driscoll trio atop Cal’s class, but it’s close enough that the battles should come down to development as opposed to just overwhelming talent.
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