The International Swimming League (ISL) will hold a draft to establish its 2021 rosters. Teams can retain up to 16 athletes from 2020, including one athlete per team retained via a fan vote.
The ISL announced the news this morning. The upstart professional swimming league is in its third season. Over the first two seasons, teams competed to sign athletes individually, without many rules defined clearly to fans or media. In season 3, the league has laid out a set of rules allowing teams to retain up to 16 members from their 2020 rosters, while sending unretained athletes into a league draft pool.
The ISL will draft during the week of June 21, 2021.
Here’s how the process works, according to the ISL press release:
#1: Five ‘Protected’ Athletes Per Team
One week before the ISL draft, each GM will publicly announce five athletes that their team will retain from its 2020 roster.
#2: Ten More Retained Athletes Per Team
After that, each team can retain up to ten more athletes from its 2020 roster. We’ve asked about the difference between step #1 and step #2, but have not yet received a response. So far, it appears that five can be announced ahead of time, with ten more being retained in the week leading up to the draft.
#3: Fan Vote Retains One More Athlete Per Team
Step #3 brings a major twist: fans will get to vote on retaining one more member of each team. It’s not clear yet how exactly that process will work, how fans declare their fandom for a specific team, or if fans will be allowed to vote on one retained swimmer for every team. But each team’s fan vote will allow that team to hang onto one more athlete, bringing the total retained athletes from 2020 rosters up to 16 if a team uses all three steps completely.
#4: Dispersal Draft For Unretained Swimmers
Everyone outside of those 16 athletes (or less for teams that don’t retain the maximum number) will be entered into the ISL Draft Pool. Each team can select up to 11 swimmers from the draft pool, with the lowest-ranked club from 2020 will get the first pick. That would appear to set the draft order as follows for 2021:
- Aqua Centurions
- DC Trident
- New York Breakers
- Toronto Titans
- Tokyo Frog Kings
- Iron
- LA Current
- London Roar
- Energy Standard
- Cali Condors
The draft should take place the week of June 21.
#5: Free Agency From Draft Pool
After that, teams can fill out the remainder of their rosters. Rosters will be capped at 36 total athletes per team. One wrinkle: the ISL release says teams can only fill their rosters out using the remaining swimmers in the ISL Draft Pool.
Other Details
- The ISL will launch a registration form on its website (here) for swimmers interested in joining the ISL Draft Pool. The form is expected on April 19.
- Details for the fan vote will come via the ISL’s social media channels and website a week before the ISL draft – that should be mid-June.
- Last season, teams typically carried 16 men and 16 women, so the current plan would have about half of each roster retained and the other half sent to the league draft.
Further Questions
With the new wrinkles to the league just announced, there are still plenty of details to clarify. We’ve asked about athletes who don’t enter the 2021 ISL Draft Pool and whether they’ll be eligible to compete and sign as free agents later on. We also asked if athletes have any option to decline competing for a team they are drafted to.
The other big question revolves around how 2020 rosters are defined. A number of top stars (particularly Australians on the London Roar) were named to ISL rosters in 2020, but didn’t make the trip to Budapest to compete. We’ve asked whether a team can retain athletes it had signed, but who didn’t compete for that team in 2020, or whether teams can only retain athletes who competed in the 2020 season.
As of publication, we haven’t received answers to the questions above, but we will update if we receive further info.
Team Name : Cali Condors
Swimmer name : Wddie Wang
I just want Tokyo to retain Morozov once he’s back in shape and to get Seto to tag team with hagino
Woah Woah Woah. ISL released how the draft will go and its actually a rolling sepection. It means AQUA + DC will have 5 Whole rounds of selections before Energy and Cali can draft their FIRST SWIMMER. (Outside the 16 chosen by the team)
I will be declaring myself for the Draft. I haven’t raced in a decade, but I’ve been training in secret. The other teams won’t know what hit them! 2021 ISL Rookie of the year incoming. **Warning** Seeing me in a race suit may result in an adult rating for the TV broadcast.
This is stupid. Retain 5 swimmers only, everyone else goes into the draft for the first year only. After that teams can retain up to 16. Problem solved.
Yeah I’m not sure they’ve solved the problem.
We’ve asked some questions about things like whether athletes can decline to go into the draft at all, or whether athletes have to sign with the teams that drafted them.
ISL hasn’t responded (which is their MO). My hunch is that the answer to all of the above is “ultimately there are loopholes to let athletes sign with whichever teams they want.” We probably won’t find that out until one day the rosters will be released and we’ll have to all scramble to dig backwards and figure out exactly how we got to those rosters.
#2 says “up to” 10 more can be retained. Maybe this allows Cali to keep 10 more while Aqua Centurion can get rid of their entire roster but the first 5?
Hopefully there will be multi-factor authentication required for voting. We wouldn’t want the swimmers to be able to vote themselves on or off.
Apparently the difference between 1 and 2 is that the five HAVE to stick with the team or not swim at all (lol) whereas the next 10 can say nah and take a chance in the draft