The latest transfer to pack his bags and head from the Eastern Time Zone to the West Coast (well, half of the year) is former Florida Gator Eric Solis, who will be headed to train with new Arizona coach Eric Hansen.
Solis, who originally hails from the state of Michigan and Lakeshore Aquatics, was a top-100 recruit in the class of 2010. During his one season in Gainesville he posted a decent performance in the 200 breaststroke, where he placed 7th at SEC’s in 1:58.7 and dropped three seconds off of his career-best time. His 400 IM was pretty good as well, with an SEC B-final with a 3:49, which was a modest, two-second drop.
That event schedule is pretty well going to be his primary focus, since he doesn’t have much in any of the other events (best 100 breast is only around a 57). At the same time, IM and breaststroke depth are exactly what the Wildcats are going to need this year after the graduation of Austen Thompson and Cory Chitwood.
Solis says that he will be enrolling at UA in the spring, and will have a discussion with the coaching staff down the road as to whether or not he will redshirt this year (though in other big transfer cases that we’ve seen this year, the swimmers have opted to take that first semester to settle in).
Arizona’s other recent transfer is Giles Smith, who is coming from Tennessee. It didn’t take long for him to integrate into the Arizona system, even with a new coaching staff, he crushed his career-best times at USA Swimming Nationals and became a swimmer-to-watch both collegiately and nationally.
This move comes as Florida brought in a big-time recruiting class, many of whom had quite the same specialties as Solis.