TCU liked Houston so nice, they made it twice. As Texas continued to dominate the recruiting headlines in the spring semester so far, TCU has added Ford Story (John if you’re keeping score) to their 2012 class, which adds to fellow Houstonian Harrison Bui who also signed for the Horned Frogs this week. They also picked up Corey Nix out of the Frisco area.
Story and Nix have something unusual in common for D-1 swimmers…
Story is the defending Texas 4A State Champion in the 100 breaststroke (those are the smaller schools) with a 56.63; a time that would have been third overall between the two state meets. That time is the 4A State Record in the race. He also splits a 25.51 in the 50 breaststroke to lead Stratford High School to the 200 medley State Championship.
Good luck finding a whole lot of other results from him. He’s split a 21.8 and 21.7 on 200 free relays at the state meets his junior and senior years, respectively.
But here’s what’s crazy – Story doesn’t swim USA-Swimming meets. He’s like the anti-Stubblefield*. He was the third-best breaststroker in the state of Texas last year, without a single USA-Swimming result.
*Seth Stubblefield, also from Texas, wrapped up his freshman season at Cal by breaking Anthony Ervin’s National Age Group Record for 17-18’s and placing 5th in the country. He skipped high school his senior year to focus on his club training.
Where does Story’s top-end potential lie? It’s hard to project. Sometimes, these late-starters hit a whole new gear of training and just become phenomenal (see: Breeja Larson). Sometimes, the stress of a huge uptick in training can overwhelm them, and that combined with the adaptation to college life can derail their improvements.
Now let’s be clear: his high school coach Mike Hoskovec happens to be a very good high school coach (he’s the state’s reigning coach of the year). But that’s still going to shock a lot of people that Story is so fast within the limitations of high school training (practice limits, specifically).
His second event is really going to be a surprise to everyone – he rarely got to swim the 200 except for a mid-season high school meet as a sophomore where he was a 2:20.
In addition to Story, they’ve added another State Champion from that same meet who is not a USA Swimmer in Corey Nix.
Nix is a pure-sprinter out of the North-Texas town of Frisco, and he too was a state record breaker as a senior. He took 2nd in the 50 free in 20.48, and won the 100 in 45.13. That includes knocking off Princeton commit Brooks Powell and the still-unsigned (publicly) Grant Koudelka.
Nix also split a 21.78 50 fly in the State Finals this year, and was also 20.28 on a free-relay rolling start. Nix will likely step right onto at least a pair of free relays, and probably more depending on what else develops during his first year at TCU.
There’s a lot of excitement in Fort Worth over the Frogs’ pending move to the Big 12. The potential of this class so far (all three swimmers have different reasons to believe that they’re due for huge improvements as freshmen) should only increase that buzz.
Someone stole my user name!
oh i agree it is impressive. not taking anything away from the kids.
just dont want the novice reader out there to be misled that kids – outside of tx – can have that kind of success and NOT do club. or that the success achieved by these boys is common for the “high school only” swimmer.
tx seems to be the only state, i am aware of, which has such a long swim season.
again, congrats to the boys on their achievements.
congrats to the boys on their signings. but….
lets be clear… high school swimming in texas is about as close to year-round as one can get without being a member of a usa-s club team. training for high school begins in late august/earl september and doesnt conclude until the high school state champs in february. there is a pretty fast high school meet in december and many other meets throughout the year. swimmers, depending on location, will train as many as 5 times per week with their high school.
as for seth stubblefield, when he was interviewed on swim info, he was asked why he chose to forgoe his senior year and it was because high school swimming wasnt going… Read more »
swimcoach – I don’t know if you knew this, but I am actually a high school coach in Texas…so I totally get that it’s not like in the Northeast or other places where HS swimming is really a laugher and a bit of a sideshow.
Those in Texas also know that most of the good swimmers coming out of this state are swimming two-a-days, so for these guys to be limited by the 8 hour rule when they’re competing against kids who are training much more than that is still pretty impressive in my book.