William Countie and Carter Bennett have become the first two members of the South Carolina men’s recruiting class this fall to report their intentions to SwimSwam after making verbal commitments this past week.
Carter Bennett
Best times in yards:
- 50 free – 20.96
- 100 free – 47.07
Bennett, whose first name Joseph, swims for Machine Aquatics in Virginia, and is all about potential. Between their classes of 2015 and 2016, South Carolina has had big graduations in their sprint group. While Bennett’s times aren’t yet necessarily faster than the next-man-up at South Carolina, he’s only recently swum his first long course season in the summer of 2015, and already qualified for the U.S. Open in the 50 meter free (23.40).
That renewed year-round focus showed off in his short course times as well. From the very beginning of his 2014-2015 season, he was going best times at almost every met. His best time coming into the season in the 50 free was 22.52. He was faster than that 20 times during the season.
His 100 saw an even bigger leap: his best time improved by five-and-a-half seconds in a single season from 52.5 to 47.0.
Those drastic improvement curves leave uncertainty about where he’ll settle when he arrives at South Carolina, but this is definitely a potential play.
William Countie
Best times in yards:
- 100 back – 49.74 (57.11 LCM – OT Cut)
- 200 back – 1:49.01 (2:08.19 LCM)
- 200 IM – 1:55.01
Countie also made improvements during his junior season, though his career-arc has been more gradual. This past summer, the Marlins of Raleigh swimmer hit an Olympic Trials standard in his long course 100 backstroke.
South Carolina’s backstroke group is much younger than is their sprint freestyle group, led by junior Jonathan Boland and sophomores Bryce Kananowicz and Caleb Tosh. South Carolina has done a good job of attracting backstroke recruits in the past few seasons to both their men’s and women’s teams.