SwimSwam Pulse: 57% Pick Urlando Over Foster For #1 Junior Recruit

SwimSwam Pulse is a recurring feature tracking and analyzing the results of our periodic A3 Performance Polls. You can cast your vote in our newest poll on the SwimSwam homepage, about halfway down the page on the right side, or you can find the poll embedded at the bottom of this post.

Our most recent poll asked SwimSwam readers

RESULTS

Question: Who should be the #1 recruit in the boys class of 2020?

• Luca Urlando – 57.1%
• Carson Foster – 42.9%

57.1% of voters picked Luca Urlando as the #1 junior recruit in the country, compared to 42.9% picking Carson Foster.

We published our updated recruit rankings about two weeks ago, with Foster holding the #1 spot. However, those rankings referenced Foster’s superior sprint free times, and came out just days before Urlando popped off lifetime-best 50 and 100 free times at his high school section meet. With Urlando now holding better sprint free times (and therefore better value on the 200 and 400 free relays), the battle becomes a lot more contentious – and if we were to re-rank this week, we’d probably say the same things voters in our poll did.

While Foster was by far the more notable name several years ago, Urlando has taken a surge in popularity after his big long course performances last summer. Urlando probably has momentum on his side after a year of massive drops (though Foster continues to drop time himself), and Urlando does seem to have overtaken Foster in fan notability.

The two are remarkably similar, and most NCAA recruiting discussion ultimately comes down to subjective factors: how much improvement one projects for each athlete, how different events are valued, how fast the rest of the recruiting class or the rest of the NCAA is in a particular event, etc. Here are some purely by-the-numbers breakdowns of the two:

USA Swimming Power Points

Here’s a look at the top 10 times in NCAA individual events from each swimmer, ranked by USA Swimming Power Points. (Note: these are age-dependent, so swims from when the swimmers were 16 get a relative bump compared to swims from age 17). It confirms what’s a pretty good distinction between the two: Urlando seems to have the superior speed in his top events, while Foster is more versatile and has a wider range of high-level events.

Times in Common Events

Here’s a look at the events both have in their top 10, plus the relay-distance freestyles (where they both project to contribute in college). Each has three superior events. You could make an argument that Urlando’s 200 free will come down to Fosters level when he contests it again, considering Urlando is 1:47.7 in long course and Foster 1:48.5.

2019 NCAA Scoring Times

Here’s a look at the events in which each would have earned an NCAA Invite had they been college swimmers in 2019, plus how their times would have fared at NCAAs. Foster scores half a point more, but Urlando has the only A final appearance:

Ranks Among 16-17-year-olds over past two seasons

We ran a report in USA Swimming’s database, pulling the top times among 16- and 17-year-old boys over the last two seasons (from September 1, 2017 through May 14, 2019). Here is where they both rank in their best events – we only included events in which one or the other ranked inside the top 10, with the exception of the 50 free, which gets some extra relay significance. “N/A” means they didn’t rank inside the top 250 of our report:

Rate of improvement over past two years

We can focus in on each swimmer’s NCAA invite events from above, tracking the % change (with the formula [new time – old time]/old time) to see who is dropping faster in their top events. That appears to be Urlando, who dropped at about two-and-a-half percent across the board this year, while Foster only dropped closer to a percent per event.

Below, vote in our new A3 Performance Poll, which asks voters which of this weekend’s major meets they are most excited for:

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