Over the next few weeks, as the Long Course season closes out, new freshman are arriving on campus, and fans everywhere ramp up for another exciting NCAA Season, we will be running a team-by-team preview of the upcoming NCAA season. Starting with the no.12 teams and finishing with the defending National Championships (Texas men and Florida women) we will work our way down the top finishers from last year’s NCAAs and will also jump into some rising teams that we expect to break into the top tier this season. Click here to see the other women’s previews, and click here to see all of the previews, Men’s and Women’s.
Key Losses: Dina Hegazy (NCAA Qualifier)
Key Additions: Kasey Carlson (Breaststroke, Sprint Free), Stina Gardell (IM), Meghan Hawthorne (IM), Lynette Lim (middle distance free)
2009-2010 Season Recap: The women of Troy finished the 2010 NCAA Championship meet in 7th place. This is despite DQ’ing two relays—the 200 free and 200 medley. USC was the youngest team in the top 10 at NCAA’s last year. This was thanks to two-straight years of incredible recruiting.
Last year, they brought in the #1 class in the nation. This includes several immediate impact performers, and two huge transfers: Presley Bard, a transfer from Indiana, and Lyndsey Depaul, from UC-Irvine. In 2008, they brought in a class that included Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, who in 2009 won a gold (400 IM) and 2 bronzes (200 IM, 200 fly) at the 2009 World Champions.
USC is without a doubt a team on the rise, in a big way. They didn’t lose a single one of their 251 NCAA points, including relay swimmers, and only a singular NCAA qualifier.
Monster Medleys: This year, USC is the heavy favorite to win the medley relays. They have the fastest returning 100 backstroker in the nation in Bard (51.89), who took 3rd last year at NCAA’s. Bard followed that up with a great LC Nationals meet, where she was 5th in the 100. They also have the fastest returning 100 butterflier in the nation in DePaul (51.72), who also had an outstanding Nationals’ meet. They bring in a freshman named Kasey Carlson, who we’ll talk more about later, that went a 59.5 in textile as a high school senior. They could have the NCAA champ in every one of those strokes.
Astonishingly, this leaves a World Champion—albeit not in this event—Katinka Hosszu, who will likely swim the freestyle leg of the 400 medley, as the “weak leg” of the relay. The weak leg of the medley relay swam a 47.8 in prelims last year, which is still a very fast time. If this squad hits their starts, they will win the medleys easily, and could challenge the records set by Arizona in 2009 (the year of the suit).
Rising Distance Star: Haley Anderson is another big-time performer from the USC’s class of 2013. Anderson, a World Championship Qualifier in the 800m free, scored big points for the Trojans as a freshman. She was 4th in the country in the mile last season, just barely nipping 16 minutes in 15:59.99. While Georgia’s Wendy Trott probably has a lock on that event for the next two seasons, Anderson is certainly a big-time contender for the silver. Anderson also finished 12th in the 500 in a 4:40.7.
Divers, too: Even USC’s top divers are returning. Out of their two divers, junior Victoria Ishimatsu and sophomore Ariel Rittenhouse, USC returns 42 NCAA points on the boards. And remember, between the two of them, they only use up one NCAA roster spot. Ishimatsu scored in all three disciplines, including a 4th in the 3-meter and 5th in the 1-meter. While Rittenhouse only scored in the 3-meter (where she was 12th), as a former World Championship finalist, she has the potential to put up way more points than that. Also don’t sleep on redshirt junior Christine Petrilli, who missed the 2009 season with a neck injury but showed a lot of promise on the platform in 2008 as a freshman, including narrowly missing NCAA’s.
Strength-on-Strength: USC and the 200 butterfly make up the single most dominating team-event combo in the nation. Hosszu and Depaul were second and third in the nation last year in the event. With defending champ Elaine Breeden from Stanford gone, they are in prime position to go first and second this year. In addition to them, Tanya Krisman and Yumi So, who were both freshman last year, finished 11th and 13th. Depending on how coach Dave Salo decides to lay out his NCAA lineup, the Trojans could potentially finish four swimmers in the A-final. That would be a seemingly unprecedented feat, especially in an event as grueling as the 200 fly.
A New Wave: USC didn’t lose a single NCAA contributor, yet still managed to manage their scholarship money well enough to bring in another impact class this season.
Kasey Carlson, who we mentioned briefly as a part of the medley relay, went to the World Championships in 2009 and won a bronze at only 17 years old, behind Rebecca Soni. At that meet, where she also competed in the 50, she briefly held the American record after prelims, before it was broken again by Soni. Hence, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Carlson committed to USC, the alma mater of Rebecca Soni and current training grounds of both Soni and Jessica Hardy.
The breaststroke events were a relative weakness for USC last year, in the post-Soni hangover season, which is shocking given that Dave Salo is one of the top breaststroke coaches in the world. For the next four seasons, at least, they won’t have to worry about that. Carlson comes in as a probable A-finalist even without regard to the year of training and maturation she’ll have at USC. Her 59.5 from last season would have placed 4th at NCAA’s. Annie Chandler from Arizona last year was the NCAA Champ at a 58.0, but other than her, George Mason’s Ashley Danner was fastest at 59.29. Carlson definitely has the potential to win this event as a freshman, and it would be a disappointment for her to finish any lower than 4th or 5th.
As of yet, Carlson is not a contender in the 200, but that could (and should) certainly develop. In the meantime, Carlson, who is also an Olympic Trials qualifier in the sprint freestyle events, has flat-start times of 22.7/49.9 in the freestyle sprint events will have an immediate impact on the freestyle relays, in addition to the medleys.
USC also brings in two very good IM’ers, in Stina Gardell and Meghan Hawthorne.
Gardell is a 2010 European Championships qualifier from Sweden, and is the Swedish National Record holder in the 200 and 400 IMs, in both short course and long course meters. At Euro’s, Gardell went a converted 1:57.3 in the 200 IM, which would have placed her in the B-final at NCAA’s. She has a little more work to go in the 400 IM, where at the Swedish NC’s, she went a converted 4:13.18. Gardell does seem to be better in short course than long course, however—she was ranked in the top 25 in the world in both races during the 2009-2010 short course season—and that, combined with training with Hosszu, one of the world’s great IM’ers, will push her to score big points as a freshman.
Hawthorne, yet another in-state recruit for USC, is sort of the opposite of Gardell. Her better race is the 400 IM, where she placed 12th at the 2010 LC Nationals meet. Her 4:45.91 there, which ranked her 63rd in the world, converts to a 4:10 in SCY, which will score easily. She also has a 1:58.7 200 IM in textile, which she should be able to push down into at least a B-final as a freshman. Hawthorne could also train towards points in any of the other 100 or 200 yard events by no later than her sophomore year.
For their other big recruit, Lynette Lim, USC had a huge recruiting tool: her older sister, junior Elaine Lim, is already on their roster. Lim lives in Palm Springs and was born in the US, but she competes internationally for Singapore. She is a 2008 Olympian, and holds five Singaporean Long Course National Records. Lim is a middle-distance swimmer freestyler, with 2010 bests of 1:47.5/4:45/2. She will push Presley Bard or Lyndsay DePaul for the fourth 800 free relay spot as a freshman, and could move into a B-final in the 500.
Although the 5-strong 2010-2011 freshman class doesn’t have the same size as the 2009-2010 one did (5 versus 12), they certainly have the same high-scoring potential.
All-Wikipedia Team: USC Not to be underestimated is the fact that USC has a lineup of swimmers with absolutely massive international resumes. They have a lineup completely loaded with swimmers who have Eurpoean Championship, World Championships, World University Games, Olympic Games, Asian Games, and Pan-Pacific Games experience. They may have more of this elite international experience than any other team in the country. That experience will help them perform on the big-stage.
2011 Point Production Prognosis: Looking at the points that USC returns, things are looking awesome for the Trojans in 2011. Conservatively, I give them 70 points in the medleys, and 60+ from the free relays. Hosszu should be good for 45. Depaul for another 40+. 40 from Bard. 45+ from the divers. Anderson for 20 in the distance events. Maybe 16 from So and Krisman in the 200 fly. That’s around 335 points from known quantities.
It only took 382 points to win the meet last year. And those 335 points don’t include the freshman. The two IM’ers, Gardell and Hawthorne, should be good for at least 25 between the two IM events. Carlson will be 15+ in the 100 breaststroke. Other returning question marks include So and Krisman in the 100 fly, who were 19th and 29th respectively. They should pick up at least a few points there. Anderson has a shot at a B-final in the 200. Senior Eleanor Doran in the mile, and sophomore Christel Simms in the backstroke events could be scorers. Jessica Schmitt was about half a second out of finaling in the 200 breaststroke last year.
You get the picture. None of these points are guaranteed until the swimmers get in the water and prove it. USC knows this well, given that they had 3 DQ’s, including 2 relays, last season. They need to find a few sprinters to really be a complete team, but USC has the right number of points coming their way to be firmly in the thick of the National Championship race.