The opinions of Elvis and JMax are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SwimSwam.
In the first episode of Black&White Swim Talk, Elvis and JMax rank the top 3 worst things about college swimming. Special guest Dax Hill gives his take on the state of college swimming, discusses his potential retirement, and serves as judge for an all-Texas addition of “Swimming Celebrity Look-alikes”.
Justin Max and Elvis Burrows were teammates at the University of Kentucky from 2006 through 2010.
Since graduating from UK, each has continued to be involved in the swimming world. JMax has coached both club and high school swimming for the past 5 years, and has had state champions at each level, as well as Junior and Senior National qualifiers. He is currently serving as the Head Age Group Coach for a club team in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Elvis has continued his swimming career professionally and internationally. He is a Bahamian national record holder in 4 different events, and has represented the Bahamas at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and many other international competitions, most notably World Championships and the Commonwealth Games. He is currently training for the 2016 Rio games.
Hey guys solid show so far. I enjoyed your discussion about the top athletes forgoing college to pursue more lucrative opportunities in the world of professional swimming. What is your opinion on more of the top notch professionals training with club teams associated with colleges (Team Paradise at Indiana for example) as opposed to training with private clubs teams such as King Aquatics or MAC in order to at least give college swimming more notoriety? Sorry if these are outdated references, I have been out of the game for a while.
Hey Scott, Elvis here. Thanks for watching! We figured it best for me to answer this since I’ve trained in just about every scenario you can think of.
In my experience, training with a college team is great in the aspect that you have a large amount of people to compete with on a daily basis. However, as a pro swimming with a college team, the pro swimmer must be able to accept that he/she now takes a back seat to the priorities of the college swimmers. A coach can only be so many places at once. And since the coach’s career rest on the performances of the college team, the should and will always take priority.
Another… Read more »
Elvis’ comment about Eddie Reese was better
You guys are funny! I sat through whole thing!
Your next guests should defiantly be the BroZ. We’d love to talk about what it’s like to be better looking than our former coach.
You shouldn’t be talking about head coach Stepha like that.
I’ma defiantly say no’
You shouldn’t be talking about head coach Stepha like that.
I’ma defiantly say ‘no’
Exhibition swims happen in high school swimming as well. And that’s exactly why it occurs in HS swimming- the coaches are all friends and it makes the loss look less painful when AD’s look at scores. My high school team (25 swimmers) swam against a team of 10 kids and they only lost by 20 points, where in reality we won by triple digit amounts. It’s not just college swimming.
Swam all my life and I honestly still couldn’t tell you how many points are awarded to 1st 2nd or 3rd place.