Serbian Junior National Teamer Andrej Barna, who finaled in two events at the inaugural European Games in 2015, has verbally committed to the Louisville Cardinals. The 17-year old will begin college in the fall of 2016.
Barna is primarily a sprint freestyler who can stretch with some quality all the way up to the 400 meter free.
His best times, in long course (with yards conversions in parenthesis):
- 50 free – 22.94 (19.94)
- 100 free – 50.11 (43.70)
- 200 free – 1:51.98 (1:37.99)
- 400 free – 4:01.30 (4:30.36)
To this point of his career, his long course times have been much better than those in short course, although in the last 10 months, he’s made huge surges forward in both courses. He finished 6th in the 50 free and 8th in the 100 free at the European Games, which served as this year’s European Junior Championships.
Since the graduation of three-time NCAA Champion Joao de Lucca, Louisville has slid back a little bit, but still maintained a high level of performance in relays on the strength of phenomenal freestyle depth. They’ll lose some of that this season after the graduation of Thomas Dahlia and Rudy Edelen, but with a core of Matthias Lindenbauer and Trevor Carroll returning for the Cardinals as just juniors, the Cardinals could be contending for top 3 relay finishes at NCAA’s come 2017.
Coaches want to win, and their jobs depend on it. As a result, it doesn’t matter if one of your swimmers is from Texas, Michigan, or France. Coaches just want kids that can help the program.
Good for Andrej. Amazing racer, hope he develops his potential to fullest.
Interesting, seems like Louisville is turning into a place were foreign athletes are more important and placed on a higher pedestal than the American swimmers. Not to say they aren’t important but I would think an American college would take more interest in the talent in America.
You mad bro?
Garbage/ignorant comment! What about Louisville women’s team and Kelsi Worrell?
Here is another fact:
1995 Gustavo Borges, Michigan, 19.68 (BRA)
1996 Francisco Sanchez, Arizona St., 19.35 (VEN)
1997 Brett Hawke, Auburn, 19.19 (AUS)
1998 Brendon Dedekind, Florida St., 19.22 (RSA)
1999 Aaron Ciarla, Auburn, 19.36 (USA)
2001 Anthony Robinson, Stanford, 19.15 (USA)
2002 Roland Schoeman, Arizona, 19.08 (RSA)
2003 Fred Bousquet, Auburn, 19.31 (FRA)
2005 Fred Bousquet, Auburn, 18.90 (FRA)
2006 Cullen Jones, North Carolina St., 19.18 (USA)
2007 Cesar Cielo, Auburn, 18.69 (BRA)
2008 Cesar Cielo, Auburn 18.52 (BRA)
2009 Nathan Adrian, California, 18.71 (USA)
2010 Josh Schneider, Cincinnati, 18.93 (USA)
2011 Nathan Adrian,… Read more »