NCAA recruiting churns on, and so do our yearly recruit rankings.

We’ve already ranked out the top recruits in the current high school sophomore and junior classes, but now it’s time to revisit our recruiting ranks of the graduating seniors.Īs recruiting classes get closer to actual NCAA competition, we start to weigh certain factors more heavily: NCAA scoring times become more important, and we tend to value one or two standout events a bit more heavily (compared to a wide range of just decent events) than we would for a high school sophomore who has more time to develop across the board. You can look back on our original ranks for this class below, but do remember that those ranks are merely a snapshot in time – we didn’t have a working crystal ball then, nor do we now: Having already ranked this class about a year ago, we also get a clearer picture of momentum and trajectory: which recruits are continuing to drop time through their senior seasons, and which have stagnated. Somewhat thin in fly and breast, though with elite talents at the top.

We’re in the midst of a real recruiting renaissance on the women’s side: the last four recruiting classes into the NCAA have been historically good, to the point where we’re almost becoming numb to how fast these recruits are.Īnd that’s not just a product of swimming continuing to get faster. These last few classes have been truly special, with 4 of the 8 swimmers on Team USA’s women’s medley relay at the 2021 Olympics coming from the classes of 2020 (Regan Smith), 2021 (Torri Huske) and 2022 ( Claire Curzan and Lydia Jacoby). The top 5 in this class would stack up favorably against almost any class we’ve ever ranked, perhaps with the exception of the standout 2020 class. Since ranking this group as sophomores, we’ve noted how good the class is as a whole in the IMs. But by these senior re-ranks, the other strokes have caught up the IMs a bit. Sprint freestyle has really come along, with a huge group of 22/49 types behind Curzan’s elite top-end speed.

Olympics seven moments worth revisiting