Over the past couple of years, the topic of international students in NCAA swimming has been prevalent in the SwimSwam comment section and beyond. The cutting of the swimming rosters in the wake of House v. NCAA, coupled with the decline of the American men’s swimming performance on the world stage, have elevated complaints among some American swim fans about the number of foreign athletes in the organization. High-profile coaches of international athletes such as Texas’ Bob Bowman and Cal’s Dave Durden have been the biggest lightning rods for this criticism.
After looking at percentages of roster spots going to international athletes across top teams last year, SwimSwam built on that examination in 2026 by looking at points. Below, you can see how much each of the top 10 scoring teams at the 2026 NCAA Men’s Championships leaned on its international roster for points.
For athletes raised in the U.S. but representing a foreign nation – Indiana’s Raekwon Noel, Stanford’s Ethan Ekk, Florida’s Jonny Marshall, and NC State’s Kaii Winkler – they were placed in the international category. ASU Sun Devil Ilya Kharun was counted as a domestic swimmer after beginning to represent Team USA earlier this year.
| Place | Team | Total Individual Swimming Points | Domestic Swimmers | International Swimmers | % International |
| 1 | Texas | 258.5 | 200 | 58.5 | 22.63% |
| 2 | Florida | 226 | 45 | 181 | 80.09% |
| 3 | Indiana | 229 | 154 | 75 | 32.75% |
| 4 | Arizona State | 146 | 100 | 46 | 31.51% |
| 5 | Tennessee | 114 | 33 | 81 | 71.05% |
| 6 | NC State | 128.5 | 115.5 | 13 | 10.12% |
| 7 | California | 110 | 66.5 | 43.5 | 39.55% |
| 8 | Michigan | 90 | 39 | 51 | 56.67% |
| 9 | UVA | 108 | 108 | 0 | 0.00% |
| 10 | Stanford | 60 | 49 | 11 | 18.33% |
Florida, Tennessee, and Michigan relied on students from abroad for over half of their points. The runner-up Florida Gators had the highest percentage figure at over 80%, led by Canadian national and overall high point winner Josh Liendo. Other schools in the top ten, namely Virginia, received 100% of their points from American athletes. Bowman and Durden’s teams fall in the middle of the pack.
These figures don’t necessarily only display a coach’s recruiting strategy. They may also reflect phenomena like chain migration and homophily – athletes choosing teams where there are already people with a similar background to them.
Florida is the everything school. There are very few schools that have as many NCAA team titles or top 3 finishes in NCAA sports or at the Olympic Games or World Championships as Florida. The expectation by the athletic department at UF is to WIN. There is no way they’re going to let them hover around the Top 15 if they can challenge for titles, and UF has the pedigree to chase top-end talent. They’ve proven they can develop blue-chip domestic and international recruits into superstars in short and long course at the highest levels. If the top-end American talent wants to keep going to Texas or Cal, then Florida will recruit from overseas, and they will get the fastest… Read more »
There is NO comparison between an 18 year old boy and a 22 year old man who both enter as FRESHMEN. These programs who talk about developing swimmers are not being honest with their American recruits. They give the developmental kids one season to show results. They get ignored in favor of the older international guys. Get no real coaching. Then get thrown out like yesterday’s sour milk after they don’t meet expectations. It’s ruining the culture at every p4 program. There is no trust among teammates. It’s dog eat dog fighting for roster spots. It creates bitterness and animosity. It’s truly a sad situation and our American boys get hurt the most. It’s already destroying USA swimming. It will… Read more »
Thank you for this insightful article and data. It really paints a picture of our current state of swimming and as I watched both women and men’s NCAA’s last month I find myself worried about what kind of state we will be in for our home USA Olympics in two short years. The moment I realized we were in real trouble was the 1650 Free where Florida came in 1st 2nd and the winner was a 21 year old freshman international student that trains at Florida with Bobby Finke. He even said “Bobby taught me to swim the mile”. Are other countries operating this way? Probably not.
Amy, I promise you that if an American is meant to win, they will. Withholding foreign athletes from our institutions in fear of losing to them is not how I personally would want to win a race. I’m pretty sure Bobby isn’t going down without a fight the next few years no matter where Ahmed^2 is training. Or Shaine/Carson going up against Leon
If you look at World Champions from 2025,
Freestyle- McEvoy, Popovici, and Märtens do not train in the US. Ahmed Jaouadi does but that came after he became a world champ training elsewhere (funny enough, he was training in France, so I guess other countries are operating this way)
Breaststroke- Cerasuolo and Haiyang do not train in the US
Backstroke- Kolesnikov and Coetze do not train in the US. Hubert does.
Butterfly- Grousset does not train in the US. Urlando does.
IM- Marchand trains in the US.
Foreigners who train in their countries and became world champs in 2025- 8
Foreigners who became world champions and train in the US- 3
Foreigners who were… Read more »
A cogent and logical synopsis even for a U. of Dunedin Phd. student.
Any state school that receives tax payer dollars to keep the university running should have to only have American athletes…unless private nil funding or donor money used to provide the scholarship to the international athlete. In Olympic sports this would be rare. Private schools should be able to have no restrictions
That’s an absurd take.
JRT state schools than will not be competitive at all, imagine Texas without Hubert Kos on the just finished NCAA? No Trophy without Hubi, this is reality, but also other Texas guys contributed a lot….
US boys and girls should be blasses to swim next to the best rest-of -the-world talents, this is only helping US swimming to maintain competiteveness , also there is always an issue of money, marketing , funds … So faster better is more atractive, you can comapre this with NBA ( Shai, Vambi Joker…etc ) also look at Soccer Premier League UK teams, as a result England’s soccer National team is Gold medal candidate on upcoming World Cup… So you have to be really good to get invitation to join D1
. The only issue that is problemstic are the Rented Swimmers , as rhey are not real students, just one semester and they are off, and only to… Read more »
It’s a good study, but I think it should also show the percentage of roster spots to international athletes to make it more meaningful. For example, NC State gets 10% of its points from international students, but 25% of its roster is dedicated to international students. I agree that this alone isn’t a sufficient indicator, but it raises questions about NC State’s selection of international athletes. Or, conversely, Tennessee, which gets 70% of its points from international swimmers, has only 33% international swimmers on its team. This shows they’ve made precise selections, choosing the right international athletes. (I don’t know the exact situation with UVA, but I’m pretty sure they have international swimmers on their roster.)
Bro I never want to hear anyone cry about Texas internationals again go focus on Florida
The amount of international swimmers on a roster are more of a challenge at the schools ranked 11th+. Very fast 16-17yo American male recruits, many of which were late bloomers, have trouble competing for a spot with a 20-21 year old European fresh off the Olympics. Check out the points scored and the amount of international swimmers just outside the top 10 and I think the numbers will be more shocking. And this lack of roster spots for US swimmers is what is going to hurt the depth of talent in the US going forward. These recruits are now going to D3 schools where in the past they would have a spot at a power 4.
A lot of those borderline kids are, frankly, better off going to D2/D3 schools. I coached for a club where the head coach pushed all of his swimmers to power 4 schools, not because it was a good fit for them, but because it raised the club’s profile. I truly felt that a lot of these kids, who were generally very academically-inclined, would have been better off going somewhere like NYU or Kenyon than a big state school.
In almost every case they ended up transferring to a school like that anyways after a few years. Turns out it’s not very fun having to fight tooth and nail for your roster spot with every new recruiting class when you’re one… Read more »
Exactly!
They will likely have to fight tooth and nail at D3 now too. They can be large teams. And the cost can be a lot more. It’s not an easy road either.