Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

In the second of my trials preview articles, I'm going to take a look at the great unknown in Omaha: the young trials rookies. In this I'm trying to search out swimmers that may be similar, at least generally, to Ian Crocker in the year 2000. It may seem hard to remember, but Crocker was no sure thing to make that team. At 17 years old, he was probably the best swimmer his age and based on his track record he seemed most likely to make the team in the 4x200 relay. After all, he had been 1:49 as a 15 year old and that performance would have been good enough to put him on the relay at the Atlanta games. Crocker had also made strides in the 100 butterfly, recording a 53.61 in the year prior to trials. Still, ahead of him lay the relatively young Tommy Hannan and Bryan Jones, both of whom had been 52 prior to trials. To put a sum to this drawn out narrative, Crocker was not a favorite to make the team. By no means did he come out of nowhere, but he was an unknown quantity that emerged as a known and went on to be the best in the world.

What young swimmers have that same potential, to disrupt the predictable order of an event at trials? For the purposes of this article, I eliminated all swimmers who had previously been to the Olympics or made a world championship team. That means although Katie Hoff is just 18 and Elizabeth Beisel is just 15, each could be considered favorites to make the team based on their past performances. Remarkably there are very few 18 and under men who could be even within shooting distance of an Olympic berth. In 2000, Phelps (15), Peirsol (17) Klete Keller (18) and Crocker ushered in a new generation of men's talent. Who then has a chance to rise amongst the new generation?

Deep in the heart of Texas, well heralded but not oft discussed when it comes to this summer's Olympics, is one Jimmy Feigen. If you need a refresher, check out this article:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/17209.asp

Now I admit, Feigen has an extremely tough road ahead of him. His primary events, the 50 and 100 freestlye, are loaded with older, bigger, stronger and to this point, faster athletes. His long course bests stand at just 23.00 and 50.85, both from a national junior team trip to Australia in January. Both those times are considerably off what he will need to even make the final in Omaha. Yet, when you allow that his LC bests are from a meet he flew across the world to compete in, right in the midst of his high school season where he purportedly peaked to break two national high school records, there is a glimmer of a chance. If you watched the footage of Feigen inital 19.65 record breaking swim as I did, you saw a style perfectly fit to long course swimming. Feigen's success does not stem from swimming 70 percent of the race underwater, as is possible in yards pool. He swims on top of the water, somewhat akin to Anthony Ervin. Watch:



Again, I'm not saying that you should consider Jimmy a favorite to make the team, just that he has a chance to come as close to making it as any 18 and under male in the country. In fact, his chief competitor in that respect is equally able but not nearly as well known: Morgon Henderson-Kunz. Hailing from Oregon, Henderson-Kunz. Why do we hear so much less about him? Well, Henderson-Kunz is considerably slower than Jimmy thus far in SCY: his bests are 20.68 and 44.55 according to USA Swimming. However, he's actually a better LCM 100 freestyler than Feigen, having achieved a time of 50.47 at the Pacific Northwest sectionals earlier this year. Like Feigen, he would need a monumentally large drop in the event to advance past the semi-finals. Still, I wouldn't be too surprised if these two come proportionally closer than any other young men their age to making the team.

I strained for the purpose of equality to find women suitable to my rubric. The problem, of course, is that the young generation in women's swimming has as usual already arrived in the form of Hoff, Zeigler, and possibly soon to join them Hersey and Beisel. As always, if you're reading this and have any feedback, please message me or write a comment below!