Wade Nelson of the Golden West Swim Club and Lily Salzer from the Columbia Swim Club have both verbally committed to the University of Wyoming.
Nelson swims for the famed Edison High School club in Huntington Beach that produced, among others, NCAA Champions and National High School Record breakers Cindy Tran and Tom Shields; he also swims under former Olympic coach Mark Schubert at the Golden West Swim Club.
Nelson is primarily an IM’er, with a special emphasis on breaststroke. In yards, his bests are 1:53.83 and 4:00.63 in the 200 and 400 yard IM’s, plus 58.4/2:05.5 in the 100 and 200 yard breaststrokes.
The Cowboys have a decent breaststroke group, but perhaps most importantly have done a very good job of developing their breaststrokers. For example, Jordan Turner, after a rough freshman season, exploded last year as a sophomore to knock four seconds off of his best time in the 200 breast.
Nelson joins his older brother Ryan, who last year at Wyoming had a hugely successful freshman season. He just missed the NCAA selection time with a 3:47.23 in the 400 yard IM. Wade chose Wyoming over Utah and Denver.
Salzer, joining the women’s team, is more of a freestyler/backstroker who could wind up going a lot of different directions for the team. In yards, she’s been 53.0/1:52.0/5:03.6 in the 100, 200, and 500 yard freestyles, plus 58.9/2:03.7 in the 200 yard back. The best guess is that she’ll develop as either a middle-distance freestyler/200 backstroker, or maybe even push her breaststroke and turn her into an IM’er (she’s not a very good breaststroker, but it shouldn’t be hard to make some quick improvements there).