By Jared Anderson on SwimSwam
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We continue our traditional spring recruiting coverage with our “Way Too Early” ranks of the current high school sophomore class. As top recruits continue to give verbal commitments earlier and earlier, we’re moving up our rankings to help give better context to big recruiting announcements.
Before we run over our traditional ranking methodology, we should head off a few counterarguments at the pass:
- Isn’t this too early to have a good read on talent? Aren’t 16-year-old kids still improving? Sure feels that way. On the other hand, coaches are clearly finding roster spots for kids who verbally commit this early. And if we and our readership want to have the most accurate picture of how the recruiting season is playing out, it’ll be useful to have some sort of ranking – even one still very much in flux – to refer to as big-name swimmers commit.
- But recruiting ranks don’t matter. It’s the fast-dropping swimmers and diamonds in the rough that really have the biggest NCAA impact. Not true. There are always fast-rising swimmers who quickly develop into NCAA stars. But there are far less of them than there are elite high school prospects that become high-impact NCAA swimmers. We all love the Cinderella stories, the unranked recruits who flourish into dominators. But even those rags-to-riches stories aren’t as fleshed out if they don’t have a clearly-defined “rags” setup. These ranks help show us who is most likely to become NCAA standouts… but also contextualize where the eventual breakout stars originally rated compared to peers. If you, your favorite swimmer or your son/daughter isn’t ranked, don’t get mad – see it as the starting point for your/their rise to stardom.
- How accurate can these be with two plus years of development to go before any of these swimmers compete in the NCAA? Who knows? This is as new to us as it is to you. For these ranks, we’re a little less concerned with actual NCAA scoring times than we are in our junior/senior ranks, and probably marginally more interested in “ceilings” – wide event ranges, versatility, etc. But as with any ranking, these are ultimately nothing more than a snapshot in time: what the top of this recruiting class looks like in the moment, with full admission that a lot of these ranks can and will change by the time they finish their senior years.
Further reading:
THE METHODOLOGY
Our goal in these rankings is to reflect what college coaches look for in recruits, based on many years of conversations and coverage.
We focus only on American-based athletes, simply because there is so much uncertainty with international recruits – if they’ll come to the states, when they’ll come to the states and with what graduating class they should be ranked. Projecting international recruits often becomes more a discussion of when they’ll first join a college program and not which program they’ll join.
A few other factors that weigh heavily in our rankings:
- Relay Value – Relay points count double in college swimming, and any program needs a strong stable of quality sprinters to fill out all 5 relays with studs. Obviously, a special distance swimmer can easily rank ahead of a very good 100 freestyler, but college swimming generally values a sprint freestyler over a distance swimmer, all other factors being equal.
- Improvements – Actual times are a the trump card, but any big improvements in quality can make a difference as well. For example, a swimmer who only took up year-round swimming as a junior in high school going the same time as a swimmer whose been swimming year-round since they were 8 will probably get the edge in our rankings. Think Breeja Larson.
- Short Course over Long Course – we recognize that some programs, many programs, put their focus with their high school aged swimmers on long course, especially depending on when the high school championships may fall. That said, college swimming is short course, so a swimmer who is great in short course but struggles in long course will have the advantage over the reverse.
- NCAA scoring ability – NCAAs are the big show for college teams, so we’ve weighted NCAA scoring potential very highly. Swimmers who already have NCAA scoring times wind up mostly filling out the top our of rankings. Since college athletic directors – and by extension coaches – also place high value on conference championships, scoring ability at conference meets is also a factor in our rankings.
- Relative depth in the NCAA and recruiting class – a wealth of elite depth nationwide in one stroke discipline makes a big difference in what times are considered more valuable in that event. Events rise at different rates in the NCAA, but when one event gets extremely deep and fast at the college level, it makes high school prospects in those events a little less valuable, relatively, with lots of other veteran options. In the same way, a recruiting class stacked with swimmers in butterfly, for example, would make each butterflyer a little less sought-after in the market, with lots of other recruiting options able to provide similar production.
Of course, there’s no way to predict the future, and the most concrete data we have to go on are cold, hard times. These rankings in no way mean that all of these 20 swimmers will be NCAA standouts, and they certainly don’t mean that no swimmer left off this list will make big contributions at the NCAA level.
THIS CLASS
- Not as good as last year’s – but that’s hardly a fair comparison
- A few outstanding sprinters at the top
- Much more thin in backstroke than last year
- A good class for distance free – particularly fast-rising talents
- Deep breaststroke class – but who will be the top one?
This class isn’t as dominant as last year’s group – but that’s to-be-expected, considering the class of 2020 is easily the best recruiting class we’ve seen since the high school crew of 2014, and might even be the best we’ve ever ranked. This 2021 group does offer some great value, though, as its strengths complement the 2020 class very well.
Where the 2020 class is built on fly/back types who can also sprint in free, the 2021 class has two elite true sprint recruits at the top: Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske. Both are already sub-22 in the 50 free, and even considering we ranked most of these classes as juniors, we haven’t seen a 21-second sprint prospect out of high school (through their junior year) since Abbey Weitzeil in the class of 2015. Huske is probably best in the 100 fly and Walsh a more true 50/100 free sprinter, but both are excellent through the relay distance freestyles and strokes.
On the other hand, it seems like most of the great backstrokers in this age bracket congregated together in the class of 2020. Beyond Walsh (a 51.5 backstroker) the backstrokes are relatively thin in this class, especially for true two-distance backstrokers. That’s actually true of most strokes – there aren’t a lot of standouts in both the 100 and 200, but a lot of great times in one or the other, which suggests some ability to bring around either the speed or the endurance over the remaining two years of high school.
The 2020 class was also thin in distance free, and this class is the opposite. We’ve got two distance types in our top 5, and three more inside the top 20. A lot of the top distance talents are either relatively new to the mile, or have dropped significant time in the past year, so keep an eye on this class to potentially become historically good in the distances.
There’s no clarity in breaststroke – it’s a deep class without one true standout. The class in general is better at the 100 breast than the 200, but there are still no sub-minute nor sub-2:10 breaststrokers as of yet. The door is certainly open for one of the current top talents to break out and take charge of the top breaststroker mantle, and the resulting bump in recruiting value.
**The 1000 free isn’t an event at the Division I NCAA Championships, but is swum instead of the 1650 in many Division I dual meets and is part of the NCAA program in Division II.
With that out of the way, let’s get to our rankings.
Disclaimer: there are a lot of high school sophomores in the country, and no really good, complete, 100% accurate listing of them all. If you don’t see your favorite swimmer on the list, feel free to politely point them out in the comments. There’s a chance that we disagree with your assessment of their spot in the top 20, and so long as it’s done civilly, there’s no problem with differences of opinions. There’s also a chance that we’ve simply missed a no-brainer (we’ve taken every precaution to avoid that), and if that happens, we want to make sure we correct it.
TOP 20 SWIMMERS FROM THE CLASS OF 2020
1. Gretchen Walsh– Nashville Aquatic Club – Harpeth Hall High School – Nashville, TN
Best Times: 50 free – 21.82, 100 free – 47.49, 200 free – 1:44.91, 100 back – 51.57, 100 fly – 52.23, 200 IM – 1:58.15
It’s the second straight year we’ve got a Walsh sister in our top two. Gretchen is the top value in this class, in part because she already has two times that would have made NCAA A finals this past year, and in part because of how valuable those two events – the 50 and 100 free – are in the NCAA format. Between her class-best 100 back and 200 free, Walsh is a three-event, four-relay powerhouse coming in the door, and should be a massive, massive recruiting pull for whichever program can sign her.
2. Torri Huske– Arlington Aquatic Club– Yorktown High School – Arlington, VA
Best Times: 100 fly – 51.29, 50 free – 21.95, 200 fly – 1:56.18, 100 free – 48.70, 200 free – 1:46.66, 200 IM – 1:58.13
Huske is another huge sprint talent in this class. She projects more as a two-distance flyer who could also cross over into freestyle – perhaps a Kelsi Dahlia type. She’s got the best 100 fly in the class by more than a full second, and her 50 free is only a tenth behind Walsh. As we noted above, 21-second freestylers are exceedingly rare out of high school, much less this early in their high school careers. Huske is also improving very fast – her freestyles have dropped from 22.3/50.3/1:49.1 over the past year, and her 200 fly from 2:01.1.
3. Grace Sheble– NOVA of Virginia – James River High School – North Chesterfield, VA
Best Times: 200 fly – 1:54.84, 400 IM – 4:06.35, 200 IM – 1:57.00, 200 free – 1:46.88, 100 free – 50.61, 500 free – 4:45.26, 200 breast – 2:15.32, 100 breast – 1:01.75
Where Walsh and Huske handle the sprintier events, Sheble is the class’s premiere mid-distance stroker and IMer. She’s got times that would’ve already scored at NCAAs in the 400 IM and 200 fly, and is only about a second off of A final level in the IM. Sheble has remarkable versatility – she should be an 800 free relay threat down the road, and could even fill in on medley relays as a breaststroker for a team really in a pinch. She’s got a very natural NCAA event combo: 200/400 IM and 200 fly, and she’s the best in her class in all three events.
4. Paige McKenna– Nation’s Capital Swim Club – Easton, PA
Best Times: 1650 free – 15:48.07, 1000 free – 9:35.99, 500 free – 4:41.21, 200 free – 1:47.36
The top four in our rankings cover the top times in the class in 11 of 14 events. The three distance free events come courtesy of McKenna, a rare sub-16:00 miler out of high school. We haven’t seen a junior go this fast in distance since Erica Sullivan in the class of 2018, and the sophomore McKenna is only seven tenths behind what Sullivan went when we ranked her junior class. She’s got the class’s best mile, 1000 and 500 frees, including a time in the mile that would’ve been 5th at NCAAs this year. She’s about two seconds out of scoring range in the 500 fre
