- Big Question #1: is Michigan the Greatest Program Ever?
- Big Question #2: Who was the swimmer of the meet at the Men’s NCAA Championships?
- Big Question #3: The Impact of Internationals at the Men’s NCAA Championship Meet?
The 2013 NCAA Women’s Championship meet, in stark contrast to the men’s that we broke down last week, has a vastly different ratio of international vs. domestic point scoring in the individual ranks. When individual points for swimmers are tallied in the women’s meet, there are just 357.5 points scored by athletes who represent other countries internationally.
Just like the men’s meet, we’re most interested in athletes who represent other countries internationally but train in the United States for purposes of competitive balance and identity, rather than matters of “scholarship fairness” or “admittance without taxation” (those matters are more politically geared toward editorials than statistical analysis) so we’ve included those athletes who hold dual citizenship but choose to represent other countries, or those who have grown up predominantly in the US but still represent other countries. As a point, SwimSwam has no universal stance on the matter, though each individual is entitled to his or her own opinion on the subject.
By our count, and that sort of information is always a little bit dicey, there were only two women who fell into the category of dual citizenship with the USA: Texas A&M’s Erica Dittmer (US and Mexico), and Louisville’s Tanja Kylliainen (US and Finland),
Just 13 of the 43 women’s teams had an international contribution to their individual scoring, as compared to a full half (20 out of 40) of the men’s teams.
The top three scoring teams internationally were Florida, Texas A&M, and Georgia. What’s perhaps most interesting is that of all the teams on this list, save for maybe Cal, those are the three schools that also contributed the most to the American Olympic program in 2012. Florida is the home training ground for Elizabeth Beisel. Texas A&M has two US Olympians: Cammile Adams and Breeja Larson. Georgia’s roster included Allison Schmitt and Shannon Vreeland. That shows that the coaches are finding a balance between training America’s best and the best from certain other countries.
The only team in the top 7 finishers that didn’t have an international swimmers core individually was Tennessee, though they did get 14 diving points from British senior Jodie McGroarty. #8 Stanford, #9 Texas, and #10 Minnesota also didn’t have any internationals score individually (that we caught, anyway.) The Cardinal, in fact, have just two international athletes on their roster, and Texas has just one. Minnesota had a couple of Canadians on their NCAA roster, but none of them scored individually.
So why the disparity between the men and the women? It’s all speculation to answer that question, but the best guess would be the relative development of American high school swimmers on the women’s side as compared to the men’s side. A quick scan of the United States National Team, Olympic roster, or the results of Junior National level meets shows that for every Jack Conger and Ryan Murphy who is already at NCAA scoring level in high school on the men’s side, there are 3-4 of the same on the women’s side.
This means that NCAA women’s coaches don’t have to reach outside of their own national borders as often to find the big-time talent that scores at NCAA Championship meets, and in fact, in most cases it wouldn’t do them any good. In most of the world, there is far less development and participation in women’s sports than there is in men’s at this sort of “deeper” level, so the pool of talent to pull from is just not as big around the world.
When looking at countries like Brazil or South Africa, that produce so many NCAA scorers on the men’s side, their elite women’s ranks are almost nonexistent in comparison.
Without further ado, here are our scoring tables to the best of our ability. There’s no easy reference for these things, but we’ve run the numbers across a few different eyes to ensure completeness. If any omissions are found, we’ll be sure to correct though.
| Rank in Int’l | Rank Overall | Count | Int’l Points Scored | Total Points Scored | |
| 1 | 6 | Florida | 3 | 81 | 305 |
| 2 | 4 | Texas A&M | 5 | 63.5 | 323.5 |
| 3 | 1 | Georgia | 2 | 43 | 477 |
| 4 | 11 | Indiana | 4 | 40 | 115 |
| 5 | 7 | USC | 2 | 37 | 291 |
| 6 | 14 | Missouri | 1 | 29 | 71 |
| 7 | 22 | Louisville | 1 | 21 | 36 |
| 8 | 17 | UCLA | 1 | 12 | 54 |
| 9 | 31 | West Virginia | 1 | 12 | 13 |
| 10 | 5 | Arizona | 1 | 11 | 5 |
| 11 | 2 | Cal | 1 | 5 | 393 |
| 12 | 23 | Arizona St. | 1 | 2 | 31 |
| 13 | 43 | Villanova | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The top 10 individual international scorers at NCAA’s on the women’s side:
| School | Country | Total Points | ||
| 1. | Stina Gardell | USC | Sweden | 36 |
| 2. | Brittany MacLean | Georgia | Canada | 23 |
| 3. | Ellese Zalewski | Florida | Australia | 31 |
| 4. | Sinead Russell | Florida | Canada | 30 |
| 5. | Dominique Bouchard | Missouri | Canada | 29 |
| 6. | Brooklyn Snodgrass | Indiana | Canada | 28 |
| 7. | Tanja Kylliainen | Louisville | Finland | 21 |
| 8. | Jessica Thielmann | Florida | UK | 20 |
| 9. | Chantal van Landeghem | Georgia | Canada | 20 |
| 10. | Lili Ibanez Lopez | Texas A&M | Mexico | 18.5 |
Also maybe partially due to the fact that girls find it harder to move to another country, for various reasons (family, etc).
Even in the United States, we hear girls are transferring back to a college closer to their hometown etc.
I think a major reason there are fewer International female swimmers in the US college system is because there are fewer women international swimmers period and that is do to the fact there is NO Title 9 in these other countries to give females the same opportunities. Look at Brasil, there are great male swimmers but very few elite female swimmers. Same with France and many other countries.
Granted Title 9 isn’t all great but in this regard the USA women are plentiful and that will make us the fastest and DEEPEST swimming country on the women’s side.
Agree with this statement as I a always telling people why the American women are so dominate Soccer with our numbers and in so many countries women have never had the same impetus from their culture compared to the men. Also the tendency to finish sooner in their cultures also. There is no doubt title IX has had a great influence here although swimming bias always had a higher ratio of women and the men and women in swimming in this country have swam the same events and same rules long before most other sports.
Title 9 is why there are more international swimmers in the NCAA. It was meant to make things equal. Football has a huge number of scholarships for male athletes but there is no sport equivalent to even out the number of scholarships for women. The problem with this is that they do not take away scholarships from sports like football, they take them away from the other male sports, like swimming. So yes, title 9 helps female athletes, but it hurts male athletes that do not play football. There are less international female swimmers in the NCAA because there is more money to develop the American swimmers. The men’s programs only have 9.9 scholarships per team compared to the 14… Read more »
Well said.
Maybe the high number of male foreign athletes in NCAA swim programs is reason enough for the men’s programs for getting the axe!
Aren’t there also gender physiological issues at play-girls mature physically earlier than boys, peak athletically sooner, and retire earlier. An international athlete who matures earlier doesn’t necessarily benefit from American college coaching more than they would from national team support and earlier exposure to LCM racing.
It’s not just an international thing since Janet Evans, Jessica Hardy, and Missy didn’t/won’t compete all four years in college and Hoff, Chloe, and Dagny never competed at all in college.
It’s also not just a swimming thing since America’s best female tennis players, gymnasts, and skiers rarely compete in college.
Rick makes a good point, but I think the answer lies in the number of different options for boys in terms of sports than girls at the age group and high school level. You’ll often see greater numbers at meets on the girls side, because boys are (a) more into baseball in the summer and (b) more into football in the fall, which compliments their perceived shorter attention spans. The girls will be more likely to find one activity and stick to it, whereas the boys will jump around a lot more to figure out what they like.
So while the U.S. still develops the top end kids, the depth on the guys side may not be as strong as… Read more »
You have missed the obvious. Australian girls only go to the USA for an interesting experience or to get something out of their age group prowess .
Time is very big element . US college degree is 4 years general which qualifies you for nothing plus the fact that it will most likely not be recognised back home. 4 years well spent at an Australian university could get you a degree + professional qualification eg physio , accountancy – even a straight law degree . If you are really really smart 5 years can get you medicine . Plus the fact that he US year starts in September which is an extra 8 months wait to begin from school.
Australan… Read more »
The girls I know who are athletic participated in various sports. My daughter played soccer for 11 seasons, basketball for 9 seasons, tennis for 2 years. coed baseball for 6 seasons, dance/tumble for 5 years, year round swimming for 6 years. (all before the age of 18).
All of her friends and my friends kids had similiar schedules (some of the sports were different). The different sports were fun, but then the year round instructors would get upset if a practice was missed for a baseball game, etc. As the kids get older, it gets harder and harder to juggle the different sports because coaches act like they own the athlete. Some coaches even hijack park programs to give their… Read more »
Florida is very popular with the Latin Counties but I think most of the foreign swimmers are not from the Latin Countries. As for women swimming in the States producing a lot of talent this is true compared to the men. I was looking at some league finals in Southern Ca and let say that you have Sonia Wong, Ella Eastin, Lindsey Engel and Katy McLauglin on the girls side. A lot of tall males in the area played Basketball more than swimming, and the girls do both sports more equally.
We deal with quite a few international swimmers (Snodgrass and van Landeghem are two of our freshmen) and I have found that many of the female swimmers from other countries don’t realize that there are opportunities to swim in college in the states and get an education.
A lot of these girls grow up thinking that if they are not on their country’s national team by 16 or 17 they have no future in swimming. Most are prepared to retire after high school.
This is not unlike the way the U.S. used to be concerning women athletes. I think we will start to see a growing number of international female swimmers at U.S. universities in the near future.
Some US coaches still have the attitude that girls peak at 15 years of age. There are some LSC’s who believe that there is no swimming future for athletes if they are not at the Junior National level by the time they are 15 or 16 years old (males and females included).
Very disappointing to see that Florida has typically had the most foreign swimmers in the program. Limits the amount of American grown swimmers who want the opportunity to swim there. UFs AD should be informed with this information.
I don’t think having 3 international female swimmers is limiting their total number of swimmers. Don’t they typically bring in huge freshman classes each year? I’m sure Florida is recruiting internationally, but there are probably a boat load of international swimmers that contact Florida. I mean, who wouldn’t want to swim for the USA Olympic Team coach in Florida outdoors, especially kids that believe in a volume based program?
Not taking a side in the argument, but to clarify, Florida has 7 internationals on their roster; only three of them scored at NCAA’s.
But If I recall correctly.. on DII/DII (Incarnate for ex.) the number of internationals girls are much higher than on NCAA..
LOL! Yes, NSwim, someone needs to get on the horn to Jeremy Foley stat! He’s had his head in the sand for the past 15 years!