ISL First 5: Energy Standard Will Bring Back Sjostrom, Haughey, Kolesnikov

International Swimming League franchises have begun announcing which swimmers they’ll be officially retaining for next season. 2019 league champs (and 2020 league runners-up) Energy Standard kicked things off by retaining Sarah Sjostrom, Siobhan Haughey, Chad le Clos and Emily Seebohm.

Sjostrom was the league MVP in 2019 and finished #7 in regular-season points last year despite swimming only three of four regular-season meets. She’s been hampered this spring by a broken elbow, but should be back to full strength by the fall.

Haughey (#11) and le Clos (#12) were also high-ranking individual scorers. Haughey might get a value boost with tweaks to the 400 free scoring, where a swimmer leading at the 100-meter checkpoint can earn even more points. Haughey finished second in the 400 free at last year’s league finale and led at the 100-meter mark.

Kolesnikov was just the #81 overall scorer last year, 13th among Energy Standard swimmers. But he’s a young fast riser with a massive scoring ceiling in backstroke, freestyle, and even IM.

Seebohm was the team’s 6th individual scorer last year and #24 across the league. She was one of only a few Australians to race amid tough pandemic travel restrictions for Australians.

Each team will retain up to 16 athletes through five rounds of retention and one round of a fan vote. Top names still unretained for Energy Standard include Ilya Shymanovich (the league’s #15 regular-season scorer last year), Evgeny Rylov (#23), Florent Manaudou (#27), Anastasia Shkurdai (#35), Benedetta Pilato (#49) and 2020 opt-out Ivan Girev.

Though all of those names were registered for the league as of late May, we currently don’t know which swimmers have since withdrawn from the league or chosen to take a competition break after this summer’s Olympics.

Here is Energy Standard’s announcement of retained swimmers on Instagram:

DRAFT/PLAYER RETENTION RULES

First, a quick refresher on personnel rules, as announced by the league:

Each team can retain up to 16 swimmers from their 2020 rosters across six different rounds of retention:

1. 5 pre-selected athletes to retain
2. 4 athletes announced in round 1 of retention
3. 3 athletes announced in round 2 of retention
4. 2 athletes announced in round 3 of retention
5. 1 athlete announced in round 4 of retention
6. 1 athlete voted on by fans (this round of retention comes after the first round of the ISL draft, though)

After that, players not retained will fall to the ISL Draft Pool, where the Aqua Centurions and DC Trident will each have a first-round pick. The Draft Pool will include unretained players, but also ISL rookies, like NCAA graduates and other new ISL additions.