By Jared Anderson on SwimSwam
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It’s that time of year again where we at SwimSwam rank out the top 20 high school swimming prospects in the upcoming NCAA recruiting class.
As college recruiting has reached earlier and earlier into high school classes, we’re continually expanding our recruiting ranks and coverage. Last spring, we ranked out the then-sophomore class. This is essentially a re-rank of that class, taking into account a year of improvements. Stay tuned to our recruiting channel for more additions to our yearly recruiting coverage:
- Boys & Girls ranks for current juniors – high school class of 2021 (updated rankings from our “Way Too Early” rankings last spring)
- Way Too Early ranks for current sophomore boys & girls – high school class of 2022
- Re-Rank of outgoing senior boys & girls – high school class of 2020
Further reading:
So without further ado, let’s take a look at this class as a whole, then review our ranking methodology (please read it before you get upset about how low the top miler is ranked!) and get into our rankings.
2020 addendum: We anticipate the counterarguments already: ‘So-and-so missed their taper meet due to coronavirus!’ ‘These ranks will give an advantage to swimmers who had their high school seasons in the fall!’ ‘We can’t possibly know how fast so-and-so would have gone!’ The questions, of course, are valid. But the best we can do is take the information we have now and make our best ‘snapshot’ rankings. If we’ve made a tweak this year to account for coronavirus cancellations, it’s taking long course improvement curves a little bit more into account – if someone came up with big long course drops last summer or at U.S. Open, that’s potentially the most recent data point we have, and can help us identify fast risers. And trying to predict who was and wasn’t tapered isn’t a new phenomenon this year. With that in mind, the point of these rankings is discussion, and we’ve now got a whole new layer of analysis to discuss in the comment section this time around.
THIS CLASS
- Outstanding sprint class, particularly the three stars at the top
- A very deep developmental breaststroke class, but no single standout
- A break from two years of insane backstroke groups
- Not a lot of two-distance flyers – most are fly/back combo types
- Strong distance class
Even last year, we could see how good this sprint group would be, and they’ve only gotten better over their junior seasons. Gretchen Walsh, as a sophomore, was already faster than any junior we’d ranked since Abbey Weitzeil. As juniors, both Walsh (21.50) and Torri Huske (21.83) are faster than Weitzeil was as a junior (21.98). And there’s now a third sprinter shooting up our ranks, too.
There’s not a single breaststroker in this class under a minute, and not a single 200 breaststroker below 2:11. But what the class lacks in a superstar up front, it makes up for in depth. We’ve count at least 8 swimmers below 1:01 and at least 7 below 2:13, and we had a list of almost 20 breaststrokers who we at least considered for top 20 status in our research. This isn’t a great year to need a plug-and-play breaststroker for your medley, but it’s a great year for teams that can develop a young breaststroker with some talent.
We’ve had two years of historic backstroke stars in the classes of 2019 and 2020. This group takes a bit of a step back from that, but is still solid compared to our typically backstroke classes. We get a lot of fly/back crossover – there aren’t many true two-distance flyers, but a lot of 100 fly/100 back types who can potentially develop a 200 of one or both strokes.
We’ve got two true distance swimmers in our top 10, and a fair amount of ‘crossover’ distance types who might be recruited in another event but cross over to the mile or 500 free. That distance prowess extends to the 400 IM, where we’ve got two high schoolers with NCAA scoring times.
The other wrinkle with this distance crew, in particular, is that a few big names are much better long course swimmers than short course at this point. That’s an annual struggle in these rankings – sometimes, talent rises to the top and the ‘big names’ become productive college swimmers. Other times, a swimmer’s skill-set just doesn’t transfer well into the NCAA format. With swimmers like Mariah Denigan and Rachel Stege, in particular, we expect quite a bit of variance in their ranking from one commenter to another.
**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.
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 United 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 stars. 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 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.
- Short Course over Long Course– while every club and every swimmer will have a different balance of focus between short course and long course swimming, the NCAA competes in short course yards, and that’s going to be the main factor considered in these rankings. Long course times are another data point for consideration, but we mainly view them through the lens of what a big long course swim could mean for an athlete’s future in short course.
- 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.
With that out of the way, let’s get to our rankings.
Disclaimer: there are a lot of high school seniors 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 2021
1. Gretchen Walsh (Previous Rank: #1)– Nashville Aquatic Club – Harpeth Hall High School – Nashville, TN **Verbally committed to Virginia**
Best Times: 50 free – 21.50, 100 free – 46.98, 200 free – 1:43.75, 100 back – 51.57, 100 fly – 52.03, 200 IM – 1:58.12
Gretchen Walsh is a tailor-made NCAA recruit. She’s got the top time in the class – and it’s not close – across all three relay-distance freestyles. She’s great across all four strokes, though it’d be hard to see her staying out of the 50 and 100 freestyles with the fastest sprint times we’ve ever seen in a high school recruit. Technically, she’s hyper-efficient. This is a long course race video, but it really highlights her long arms and the way she can swim away from a field without even looking like she’s sprinting. That kind of speed at that controlled a tempo makes you wonder if she hasn’t even scratched the surface of what she can do in a 200 free yet. For what it’s worth, her improvement curve is still trending way up – she cut more than a second in her 200 and about a half-second in her 100 since our previous ranks.
2. Torri Huske (Previous Rank: #2)– Arlington Aquatic Club– Yorktown High School – Arlington, VA
Best Times: 100 fly – 50.49, 200 fly – 1:55.17, 50 free – 21.83, 100 free – 48.19, 200 IM – 1:56.65, 200 free – 1:46.07, 100 back – 53.17, 400 IM – 4:11.26
Huske is an outstanding mix of speed and versatility, and like Walsh, her talent translates perfectly into the NCAA format. She’s one of the rare two-distance flyers in this class, and comes in with NCAA scoring times in both the 100 and 200. In fact, her 100 fly and 50 free times would have made NCAA A finals in 2019. On day 2 of NCAAs, she gets to pick between a 21.8 50 free and the class’s best 200 IM, much like 2020’s freshman standout Kate Douglass. Huske is really polished in a lot of key details: she’s excellent underwater, and in this race (where she set a national high school record), she times her walls brilliantly to avoi
