Dave Salo and the USC staff have landed themselves a gold medalist within the 2014 class. 2012 American Paralympics gold medalist Ian Silverman will be fighting on with the Trojans in SoCal starting next season.
Silverman won gold in the men’s 400m freestyle in 4:01.91. Also in London he finished 6th in the 50 freestyle, 7th in 100 freestyle & 200 IM, and 8th in the 100 butterfly.
His eyes are now aiming towards Rio in 2016, and will be training with the Trojans as he works towards his Paralympics goals.
Overall he is a very solid freestyle swimmer. With 47/1:40/4:30/15:29 yard freestyle times. For the most part, they fall just outside the top five performances from the Trojans last year. With the depth the Trojan men are touting in the sprints, Silver will most likely find himself filling in the distance events behind Quintero.
Silver is a very decorated athlete already. He holds a total of 8 different American Paralympics Records in both yards and meters. This past spring, he set new Paralympics World Records in the 800m and 1500m freestyles.
While he competes and is highly successful in the Paralympics swim world, Silverman continues to compete against able-bodied Olympic hopefuls; he swam at the USA Junior Nationals in Irvine, CA this past August and finished 61st in the 400m freestyle and 36th in the men’s 1500m freestyle.
Silverman hails from Baltimore, Maryland swimming for North Baltimore Aquatic Club. He was diagnosed with bilateral spasticity a mild form of cerebral palsy in his calves, which places him in the S10, SB9, SM9 division of the Paralympics.
I noted with interest your article today about USC signing Ian Silverman to the Trojans’ Class of 2014.
The “story behind the story” is that while USC has two male signees so far – Silverman and O’Brien – these recruits are not at the national caliber of 2013 recruits Carter, Malone, Domagala, Condorelli, Stumph, etc. I suspect David Salo is in the hunt for the bigger fish in the class of 2014 – Bentz, Dressell, Schooling, etc. Silverman and O’Brien are a nice start and I suspect they are on partial or possibly even walk-on status. There are still some big names on the board who haven’t signed and other Pac-12 rivals (Cal, Stanford, Arizona) are using up their… Read more »