After one season with the Indiana Hoosiers, Villa Park, Calif., native Katrina Sommer has announced her transfer to UCLA. Moving much closer to home, Sommer should have three seasons of eligibility with the Bruins.
I am super excited to announce my decision to continue my academic and athletic career at UCLA!! 💙💛Go Bruins!!!
TOP TIMES
- 50 free – 24.14
- 100 free – 51.12
- 100 back – 55.52 (56.13 pre-college)
- 200 back – 1:59.08 (1:59.47 pre-college)
- 100 breast – 1:05.57
- 200 breast – 2:19.98
- 100 fly – 56.75
- 200 IM – 2:01.76 (2:02.75 pre-c0llege)
Sommer competed at the 2020 Big Ten Championships for Indiana, racing the 100 back (55.72), 200 back (1:59.08) and 200 IM (2:03.57). Her highest finish at the meet came in the 200 back, where she placed 32nd. She was Indiana’s #4 100 and 200 backstroker last season, and she was their second-best swimmer in the 200 back at Big Tens.
While with the Hoosiers, Sommer made improvements in both backstrokes and the 200 IM, all three of her primary events. She’s the second announced transfer from the IU women’s team from the class of 2023; sprinter Cora Dupre is transferring to Alabama.
UCLA is led in the backstrokes by rising sophomore Sophia Kosturos, who was 52.7/1:55.5 last season. Their 200 back group will return rising juniors Abriana Howard (1:56.8), Delaney Smith (1:56.9) and Ella Kirschke (1:57.3). Smith and Kirschke are also the Bruins’ top returning IMers at 1:58.3/4:12 and 1:58.6/4:11, respectively.
Sommer joins the Bruins this fall with their class of 2024: Aurora Huxman, Bailey Herbert, Crystal Murphy, Greta Fanta, Madeline Smith, Maddie Wright, Maya Wilson, and Sam Baron.
I feel bad for these athletes. I hope they do not read the comments on their articles. It’s unfortunate how people who do not know her feel the need to nit-pick and argue over her school and life decisions.
The anti-Ray/anti-Indiana University people started it…
All the Indiana student athletes transferring started it…
We can’t comment if there aren’t new Indiana transfers being posted every week on Swim Swam.
Obviously, Indiana has a disproportionate number of transfers.
However, from the outside looking in, this is less head scratchingly damning.
It’s not beyond imagination that a young kid moves halfway across the country to a school which has top 5 NCAA swim team and, seemingly, a considerable focus on producing professional swimmers who can earn a post college living in the pool, wanting to focus primarily on swimming. She then finds she doesn’t enjoy being away/doesn’t want that very specific and perilous future any more and moves back to be nearer to home and attend a school which has more academic prestige to carry with her in life after graduation.
Not saying that’s what happened, she might… Read more »
Grabbing a huge tub of popcorn and just enjoying the comments!
I’ll bring the beer.
Don’t understand how people commit to this school while seeing all of this.
Both Durden and Eddie Reese do a great job, but they’re only coaching men and smaller squads than Ray and his staff. So it’s not really the same thing. You have to be a skilled coach and leader to get the outstanding results Ray gets with college men, college women and pros. Yeah, Ohio State women and the Michigan men have vastly stepped their game up because of the competitiveness that Ray brought to the Big Ten. The conference was in the garbage before he arrived in Bloomington.
At some point you need to step up and identify yourself and your connections to the people involved. No casual third party swim fan has the strong and detailed points of view you do on Looze, Bowman, Troy, etc.
You have some good facts which we all appreciate… however, do you really think Ray coaches all these athletes alone? Why IU loses so many coaches because they have so many to lose. Now I’m not saying Ray doesn’t do a lot but I think he utilizes his assistants a lot more than we think.
Hey Guerra,
If you press the reply button under the message you’re reply to, you can keep this all in the same thread instead of starting a new one with all of your comments.
No other coach is coaching top men and women’s teams?
Let’s look at the ACC and you’ll find 2 teams with a single men’s & women’s head coach that are well within that same conversation.
Not to discredit anyone, but this discussion has more or less well surpassed the articles intent, to now be a popular opinion comment section about Ray and IU. He isn’t the only good coach in America. Each swimmer is different, and one training program won’t fit everyone…. Plain and simple.
Michigan men and women were both seeded for 5th at NCAAs.
Ohio State men and women were both seeded for 11th at NCAAs.
Virginia was 1 and 16
NC State was 4 and 8
Alabama was 8 and 12
Louisville was 10 and 14
Georgia was 6 and 17
Indiana was 4 and 20
So, Ray does have two good programs, no doubt about it. When they both won Big Tens in 2019, that was impressive. There are other programs that are doing well on both the men’s and women’s side, however.
I wholeheartedly agree, and I think most of these coaches would too, that coaching a combined program is a different animal… Read more »
That’s all I was trying to say. I wasn’t knocking them. I think the world of both Eddie and Durden. They get the top talent and do a fantastic job. In fact, there is nobody better than Eddie Reese in the history of the sport at spotting talent that other top coaches missed. I would say that Indiana and some of the other schools listed get talent that is one notch down from the talent that Texas and Cal get. From what I’ve seen, Indiana during Ray’s tenure has done the best job of coaching-up the talent they get and the results speak for themselves. I also give NC State high marks for what their doing with both programs and… Read more »
PAC-MAN, with the college team and the pros, Indiana has a big team. What’s amazing about it is that the kids get a lot of personal attention from the coaches and a lot of competition and support from their teammates. There’s nobody in the country doing the great things that Ray Looze and his staff are doing. Not even close. Look at programs with highly publicized transfers, At Indiana, they have a large training group and the kids get coached up and get faster. At Arizona State, they have a much smaller team and the coach (err. personal trainer) doesn’t have the leadership to manage a staff so the kids get ignored, get slower and then transfer. At Florida, under… Read more »
Guerra, thank you for providing a lot of history that the critics don’t know. We don’t always agree on things, but we both agree that Ray does not deserve the abuse he gets on this forum. Ray’s a fantastic coach, Ray’s a hard working coach, and Ray is absolutely dedicated to the sport.
Nobody in the country doing the great things that Ray Looze is doing? Not even Eddie Reese and David Durden?
The Big-10 is where it’s at today because of Ray Looze? Should Michigan thank Ray for winning the 2013 National Championship for the men? The only recent championship not won by Cal or Texas…Thanks Ray. Should Michigan thank Ray for winning this year’s Big 10 Championships on the men’s side this year and Ohio State thank Ray for winning the Women’s championship this year?
90% of the time, the only people getting individual attention anymore are the pros
Yeah. Texas you suck!! Eddie you’re not doing Annnnnything like Ray😂
Not even close !
Thank God Eddie isn’t doing annnnnnnthng like Ray.
Ray is not popular because of the way he treats people.
That, but there has to be more to the story. What is he asking these athletes to do that they are so against that they leave the school entirely? There has to be more… The NCAA and USA Swimming need to establish increased oversight of these programs that have such high attrition.
1 Name for you. Greg Meehan. No one is doing better… that a good Monday joke for me.
Ray has really embraced the mentality that all press is good press.
PAC-MAN, that’s just not true. Katrina had a pretty good year. She got faster, received excellent coaching and made the conference team. She saw the writing on the wall that there was a chance she might not make the conference team and decided to transfer closer to home and to a less competitive school where she would be a major contributor. Although the coaching and the competition in practice won’t be close to what she had at Indiana, I wish her well at UCLA.
You have in-depth knowledge why she transferred or are you making wild assumptions?
Well, that’s good to hear about Katrina. I’m happy that she is moving on to a place where she feels more value.
There are swimmers at other schools that are not improving and are sticking around. Yet at Indiana, they transfer. Katrina’s situation and all the other swimmers in Indiana are not unique. These cases happen at all schools and they don’t transfer at this rate…
I keep hearing that Indiana swimmers are transferring because they feel they can’t be major contributors… is it because that’s coming from the coaching staff? Has Indiana swimming become like some college football teams where swimming are ‘processed out’ as a term that is used in this situation? Are they given the ‘handshake’? Coaching… Read more »
Actually it says in the article that she was IU’s 4th best 200 Backstroker and second fastest at Conference but if you look at UCLA, she’s fifth at best. I don’t think she transferred to be a “major contributor” at a less competitive school. It must be some other reason …
Astute observation…
uh, weather?
And academics
Academics? Nah. I’m going to call that a wash. One well regarded giant state school for another. Potentially stronger in one department here and another department there.
Good luck Katrina, I hope you have an enjoyable and successful journey!
This is how you can tell that Guerra is close to the program. This is the exact same line that Ray is pushing out his door about the transfers, that these kids who are leaving come from little itty bitty clubs where they don’t work hard and then they come to the big bad city of Bloomington, Indiana and can’t handle the pressure of D1 swimming. That they were all slow anyway.
Sure, not every transfer has been a star. But, Cora Dupre was a Big Ten Champion as a freshman. Kai Bathurst was a Big Ten A-finalist. Andrew Couchon is a tenth or two from an NCAA invite next season. Julia Wolf and Morgan Scott were both on Indiana’s… Read more »
Irvine Novaquatics in no way can be called a “little itty bitty club!” Club was run by Dave Salo, and now he’s there coaching since retiring from USC. And Ray and one of the Senior Gold coaches at NOVA were teammates back in the day…