After the official release on Wednesday of the psych sheets for the 2017 Men’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships, we’ve broken down where the male individual swimming qualifiers come from.
Just like the women’s meet, this list sticks religiously to what home town swimmers listed on their official college bios. That means a few wrinkles – like how South Carolina’s Fynn Minuth is credited to Germany, even though he went to high school in Pennsylvania. Contrarily, Penn State senior Shane Ryan is credited to Pennsylvania, even though he represented Ireland at the Olympics (he grew up in the United States, is a dual citizen, and before switching his citizenship, he was a member of the U.S. National Team). Israel doesn’t include Tom Kremer, who grew up in California but represents Israel internationally.
Observations of the men’s geography:
- The women’s meet is made up of 78% Americans, and just 22% foreign athletes (218-63). The men’s meet is slanted much more internationally: 168 Americans and 67 internationals, or just 71% Americans to 29% internationals.
- Just like on the women’s side, the state of California led the way – qualifying exactly the same number of men as women (30) in spite of the men’s meet being much smaller. Texas did much better on the men’s side – qualifying twice as many (14 vs. 7) men as women.
- South Carolina (the state) out-punched their weight by qualifying 6 women for the meet, but came up with just 1 on the men’s side. Minnesota, Washington, and Indiana also didn’t produce nearly as many male qualifiers as female.
- The top 4 states in the men’s rankings (California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia) are also the home states of 4 of the top 5 teams at last year’s NCAA Championship meet (Texas, Cal, Florida, and Georgia), skipping only NC State at #4.
- Canadian men don’t have nearly the impact on the NCAA as Canadian women do. There were 3x as many Canadian women as those of any other nationality; on the men’s side, the country ranks 3rd behind Germany and South Africa.
- Egypt has never won a medal in swimming at the Olympics, but they have put 4 men into the men’s NCAA Championship meet this year.
- Among foreigners, 19 come from countries where English is the most common spoken language at home. The other 44 come from countries with non-English primary languages.
- There are more men’s NCAA qualifiers from Africa (10) than from Asia (4). The Olympic medal counts of the two African nations combined: 18. The Olympic medal counts of the 4 represented Asian nations combined: 81, including 1 gold from 2016 by Singapore’s Joseph Schooling: who will defend his title in the 100 and 200 fly in Indy.
State by State breakdown
| California | 30 |
| Texas | 14 |
| Florida | 13 |
| Georgia | 10 |
| Ohio | 9 |
| Virginia | 9 |
| Maryland | 7 |
| Pennsylvania | 7 |
| Colorado | 6 |
| Indiana | 6 |
| New York | 6 |
| North Carolina | 6 |
| Alabama | 5 |
| Oregon | 4 |
| Tennessee | 4 |
| Illinois | 3 |
| Massachusettes | 3 |
| Michigan | 3 |
| New Jersey | 3 |
| Arizona | 2 |
| Arkansas | 2 |
| Minnesota | 2 |
| Nebraska | 2 |
| Washington | 2 |
| Wisconsin | 2 |
| Connecticutt | 1 |
| Hawaii | 1 |
| Kentucky | 1 |
| Mississippi | 1 |
| Missouri | 1 |
| South Carolina | 1 |
| Nevada | 1 |
| Utah | 1 |
Country by Country Breakdown
| Germany | 6 |
| South Africa | 6 |
| Canada | 4 |
| Egypt | 4 |
| Hungary | 4 |
| Denmark | 3 |
| Israel | 3 |
| Italy | 3 |
| England | 3 |
| Austria | 2 |
| Brazil | 2 |
| New Zealand | 2 |
| Poland | 2 |
| Russia | 2 |
| Singapore | 2 |
| Slovenia | 2 |
| Argentina | 1 |
| Aruba | 1 |
| Australia | 1 |
| El Salvador | 1 |
| Estonia | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Guatemala | 1 |
| Iceland | 1 |
| Japan | 1 |
| Jordan | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
| Mexico | 1 |
| Romania | 1 |
| Scotland | 1 |
| Spain | 1 |
| Sweden | 1 |
| Venezuela | 1 |
Trinidad and Tobago for Dylan Carter of USC is not listed I believe.
When we went through the list we went to each team’s posted roster and went by their listed hometown. Dylan has Coral Springs, Florida listed. Fynn Minuth has Germany listed with Upper St Clair as high school. Shane Ryan has Pennsylvania listed even though he represented Ireland in the Olympics
Swimmer – as mentioned, this is based on an athlete’s listed home town, not necessarily which country they represent. Dylan represents T&T, but lists his home town as Coral Springs, Florida.
Thank you for the clarification!
Indiana has the Egyptian powerhouse now
Nice analysis! If you wanna go further, you could look for correlations between state of origin versus power ranking of universities. It could tell you if athletes tend to stay in state, which universities tend to recruit more from which parts of the country (or world), etc.
Eh Columbia isn’t a state, Florida is counted twice. Sorry to be a stickler
It’s Fynn Minuth and he swims for South Carolina.
He looks so young, like he’s only 13 or 11
Fynn went to high school at Upper St. Clair in Pa and graduated as a 17 year old. Mark Bernardino (ex of UVA) found a diamond in the rough.
He can only swim scy
1:50/3:53 LCM in free and 2:00 fly isn’t bad for 18
Perhaps you did not realize that he won Speedo Junior nationals in the 400 meter freestyle and came in second in the 200 m fly this past summer. And if you ever saw the length of his stroke you would know he is very well suited to long course.