In an answer to one of the most intriguing questions of this NCAA season, the NCAA has ruled that Hugo Gonzalez will not be able to compete for the California this spring, but will be eligible in the fall of 2019, according to Cal coach Dave Durden.
Gonzalez, a Spanish Olympian, initially came to the United States in the summer of 2017 to swim at Auburn, where Sergio Lopez, who won bronze in the 200 breaststroke representing Spain at the 1988 Olympic Games, was at that time the assistant coach. Gonzalez competed for the Tigers during the 2017-2018 season, and he had a memorable showing at the SEC championships, where he swam the 3rd-fastest 400 IM ever. His times from SECs would’ve made three A-finals at NCAAs, but he didn’t match those times in March, and ended up with a single B-final appearance.
After head coach Brett Hawke stepped down at Auburn and Gary Taylor was hired to fill that role, Lopez replaced Ned Skinner as the head coach at Virginia Tech, and Gonzalez announced that he would follow Lopez to Blacksburg.
Gonzalez competed at last summer’s World Championships, and it appears that he then headed to Virginia Tech, but after only a few weeks there, and apparently just before classes began, he made the decision to head home to Spain, rather than continue in Blacksburg.
After a couple months in Spain, Gonzalez disclosed plans to eventually return to the US and NCAA competition, and then later announced that he would transfer to Cal. However, it wasn’t clear at that time if or when Gonzalez would be ruled eligible to swim for Cal, with much of the issue hinging on whether or not he’d taken classes or trained at Virginia Tech.
In September, Lopez told SwimSwam’s Torrey Hart that Gonzalez had not trained with Virginia Tech, which would make it easier for Gonzalez to be immediately eligible to compete for Cal.
SwimSwam has been told that while this is true, NCAA rules state that if a student is enrolled full-time on the first day of classes, that is the same net-effect of attending class. While Gonzalez tried to unenroll from classes before the first day, because of safeguard systems in place at Virginia Tech designed to prevent students from unintentionally going below full-time enrollment, he was unable to unenroll before the first day of classes.
Evidence presented to the NCAA supports the claim that he never attended class, which apparently is part of the reason that the NCAA also ruled that he will eligible in the fall, rather than having to sit out until the spring of 2020.
The silver lining is that, according to Durden, Gonzalez’s brief stay at Virginia Tech will not cost him a year of eligibility, so he will be able to compete for three years at Cal, taking through him the 2022 season.
While in the long term, Cal will add another elite swimmer to their star-studded roster, in the short term having Gonzalez this season would’ve been a huge boost for Cal’s chances of ending Texas’s streak of four-consecutive titles. Anything close to his times at last year’ SECs could net Cal roughly 40 points, and this year is shaping up to be another tight battle at NCAAs, just as it was last year, when the Longhorns topped the Bears by only 11.5 points.
Cal’s championship season gets under way tomorrow, as the Pac 12 Championships begin in Federal Way, WA.
This headline is totally burying the lede. And at first glance, it sounds like he’s eligible . . . until you realize it’s next fall. The big question was whether he can swim NCAAs in 3 weeks. I’d suggest a headline of: “Gonzalez NOT eligible for 2019 NCAAs”
I think the NCAA got this one right. Allowing him to be immediately eligible at Cal after transferring and enrolling at VT would essentially welcome free agency to NCAA swimming. Though the NCAA Transfer Portal has essentially done just that for football. Regardless, Cal got a good one for 3 years starting in the fall.
Because free agency is bad? How does that compute?
In college athletics, I think free agency mostly is bad. Even pro athletes sign multi-year contracts. I think it’s important for student-athletes to form a life-long love for their alma mater, and if they switch schools every year, that’s hard to do. I also wouldn’t want an environment where every year there’s a negotiation between the coach and every swimmer on their roster, each of whom are testing the market with other programs. There’d be very little continuity each year. Imagine the mid-roster swimmer who improves and demands more money, leaving the coach in a position where they have to figure out who to take money from on the roster. It’s a slippery slope to this. There’s a process for… Read more »
Hugo will be a great addition to Cal
Not a bad for replacement for Seliskar in the IMs and he will have 3 years with Reece. Quite a 1-2 punch!
He will probably transfer to some other team by 2022
We only have today….tomorrow is not promised.
My god. I would say it’s unbelievable, but with the NCAA anything is believable, even a student athlete being ruled as a competitor for a school he never attended due to a technical issue and as a result being ineligible at a school he trained and studied at for a semester. The idiocy is truly staggering.
NCAA hides behind its process when it suits them and doesn’t feel at all obligated to put the need or desires of young people first. If he really did try to withdraw and a computer wouldn’t let him, it really is disgusting behavior on their part to not make him eligible. But, selfishly, Hook ‘em!
Earliest I see Texas losing at this point is 2022, breaking Indiana’s record for consecutive titles. Really a rare thing in modern division 1 sports.
That said, the 400IM training group at Cal is something else. Gonzalez, Prenot, Seliskar, and Thomas all 3:37 or better.
I agree with the NCAA idiocy assertion, but the better argument is change the rule. Right now there are restrictions on student athletes who’ve signed an NLI as high school seniors who are binded if there’s a coaching change before they enroll. This case is a little different than that, but here the student athlete was administratively binded to Virginia Tech just the same. The pleading was to have an exception to the rule & it didn’t go well. All student athletes should be able to transfer & be immediately eligible no matter what (including within conferences).
I think the poaching risks are limited. Coaches that do it proactively won’t garner much respect in short order. What swimmer wants to… Read more »
I agree wholeheartedly. In this case case like any other it comes down to the NCAA siding against students and limiting their freedom on principle. This case really highlights the NCAA’s hypocrisy though in that Hugo did everything he could to follow their rules once he realized he didn’t want to be at VT, then transferred to Cal in part to be at a top 3 or so computer science program. Guess they don’t care about “student-athletes” afterall.
Do you know for sure that he’s a comp sci major?
https://elpais.com/deportes/2018/12/09/actualidad/1544374900_277803.html
I was mistaken, it’s actually computer engineering.
The athletes don’t have to go to college to pursue their chosen sport. Once they do decide to enroll in college it’s fair for the university to apply the NCAA’s rules. The athletes don’t have to sign a NLI. They can protect themselves simply by signing scholarship papers without signing an NLI or acting as a walk on so no scholarship is signed/provided until they enroll.
Right call for everyone. It was a risky situation. Now all Texas fans can relax a little bit.