College Recruiting

Creating a New Standard for College Recruiting In Swimming

College recruiting is hard on everyone: athletes, parents and coaches. For the athlete looking for both a positive sports and educational experience, selecting a college is one of the most important decisions they’ll make. For a parent, factors like distance and finances add to the complicated decision-making process. And, for the coach hoping to select an athlete who fits in the school’s competitive swimming program, who can succeed academically and socially, and who has the best opportunity for success as a member of an existing team, those open spots (scholarship or not!) go way too quickly.  

STR is hoping to assist all three with our new STIR (Swimming Talent Identification and Recognition) Program. 

The challenge for every college coach is not only to recruit swimmers who are swimming fast, but also to recruit swimmers who have the potential to swim fast. 

College coaches, however, often have limited opportunity to evaluate the technique of recruits. First of all, they must make their current team a priority before attending to next year’s team. Secondly, rules limit the amount of contact that the coach may have with the recruit. And third, many other equally tangible factors are involved in the recruiting process – academics, finances, social adaptation, etc. The bottom line is that college coaches would benefit from additional accurate information about a recruit’s technique, information that goes well beyond the swimmer’s previous achievements in competition. 

Swimmers, their current coaches (age group or high school), and parents are on the other side of the recruiting process, seeking to find that perfect placement. Typically, a record of events/times plus a qualitative evaluation in the form of a video are the old standards for providing decision information on a swimmer’s achievements. Unfortunately, both methods of assessment fail to provide useful information on what a swimmer is capable of achieving with additional coaching and training. That’s just one reason that Swimming Technology Research has introduced STIR, a verified method of providing standardized information to college coaches that could make the best case for a recruit.  

Using Aquanex, STR’s patented video plus force measurement technology, STIR provides numerical values for specific variables that are directly related to performance: stroke rate, stroke length, hand force, and Cd - the active drag coefficient (the best overall measure of technique).  

Producing the information is fairly simple for the swimmer – a ten minute testing session allows calculation of the relevant quantitative values.  

The process for the college coach is also simplified – he/she only needs to review the percentile values for a handful of variables to completely evaluate a recruit’s technique - - and potential for swimming even faster with technique adjustments, strength training, master coaching, and increased motivation. 

Recruiting has always been something of an art. STIR is hoping to change that by adding hard data to help recruiting coaches make those hard decisions - - and to encourage swimmers who have not yet clocked their best times. 

Examples of normative values are listed on other pages in this section.