It seems that little will be left to the imagination on signing day, now that the men’s dominoes have begun to fall as well. Georgian Jimmy Yoder has made his commitment to Ted Knapp and the Stanford Cardinal.
This is Knapp’s first major recruit in his first season as the head coach after taking over for legendary Skip Kenney. Yoder adds some much-needed depth to the Stanford butterfly group, especially with the graduation of Bobby Bollier and David Mosko. He comes in with bests of 48.72/1:47.03 in the 100 and 200 fly, especially impressive given that he’s by far on the younger end of this age group: he’ll still only be 17 when he graduates high school.
Yoder also brings great results in the middle-distance freestyles, with a 1:38.02 in the 200 free and a 4:24.92 in the 500 free.
He is the top recruit in the class of 2013 from Georgia, having won the high point award at last year’s short course Sr. Champs meet.
After a huge recruiting class last season that included swimmers like David Nolan, the Cardinal don’t have a ton of needs and may not have a ton of money to give out. Still, this will be an important set of rounds for Knapp to establish himself as the new face of the program, after it was coached by Kenney for so many years.
Slight correction on this story: David Nolan was really two recruiting classes ago. The most recent recruits, who are currently freshman, include Tom Kremer, Danny Thompson, Gray Umbach, and Sean Duggan.