Ultra Swim Swimmer of the Month is a recurring SwimSwam feature shedding light on a U.S.-based swimmer who has proven themselves over the past month. As with any item of recognition, Swimmer of the Month is a subjective exercise meant to highlight one athlete whose work holds noteworthy context – perhaps a swimmer who was visibly outperforming other swimmers over the month, or one whose accomplishments slipped through the cracks among other high-profile swims. If your favorite athlete wasn’t selected, feel free to respectfully recognize them in our comment section.
High school senior Ziyad Saleem got some bad news this week: his future college swimming program at the University of Iowa was cut.
Fortunately, even that devastating program cut can’t take the shine off of Saleem’s swimming career, which surged forward with four big swims in the month of August.
From August 7-9, Saleem swam at the Schroeder Summer Invite with his club, the Schroeder YMCA Swim Team in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. A backstroker, Saleem hit new personal bests in both the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes in long course meters.
Schroeder Summer Invite Time Drops (LCM)
| Previous Best | August 2020 | |
| 100m back | 57.94 | 56.87 |
| 200m back | 2:05.65 | 2:03.37 |
Those huge time drops put Saleem just outside of U.S. Olympic Trials cuts: three tenths away in the 100 back and four tenths away in the 200 back. For the 2019-2020 season, they’d rank him 12th (200 back) and 18th (100 back) among 18-and-under boys in USA Swimming’s season rankings.
Just a few weeks later, Saleem was back, this time competing in short course yards at the Ozaukee IMX meet:
Ozaukee Aquatics IMX Time Drops (SCY)
| Previous Best | August 2020 | |
| 100y back | 48.68 | 48.27 |
| 200y back | 1:45.93 | 1:44.76 |
The highlight was a 1.2-second drop in the 200 back, which moves Saleem towards the top of his class nationally. When we updated our list of the top 20 recruits in the high school class of 2021 back in April, the fastest 200 backstroker in the class was 1:41.7-Jack Aikins. But a pair of 1:43-high/1:44-low backstrokers (Nate Stoffle and Tyler Hulet) snuck onto the 19th and 20th spots in our ranks. now, Saleem’s times would put him right in the thick of our ‘best of the rest’ section, which mostly had 48/1:44 types in the backstrokes.
Saleem should be one of the top available talents on the recruiting market after Iowa’s decision to cut its program at the end of the 2020-2021 season. And Saleem’s banner August of time drops should make him a heavily sought-after prospect for colleges looking to pad out their next set of high school signees.
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He went 2:02.01 2 back in a time trial at the first meet