When the psych sheets for the 2018 Pro Swim Series meet in Austin were released over the weekend, several readers had questions about whether the entire Indiana post-graduate group had up-and-moved to southern California.
The answer is a confirmed: no.
A portion of the Indiana post-graduate group, which includes American Record holder Zane Grothe, Ashley Neidigh, Margo Geer, Amanda Kendall, appear on the meet’s psych sheets as “Una Mvn-CA” – or Unattached Mission Viejo Nadadores swimmers. This status implies that they are transitioning to represent the Nadadores in USA Swimming competition, and Indiana head coach Ray Looze confirmed that to SwimSwam on Tuesday.
While Mission Viejo, newly-led by head coach Mark Schubert, will be the teams’ home club, the swimmers will continue to live and train in Bloomington with the post-graduate staff at Indiana. The Indiana coaching staff will remain their coaches of record, but their points will count toward Mission Viejo’s tally.
Neidigh said that the partnership may include participation in a meet in southern California or a training trip to the area, but that those details were still being arranged.
Not the entire group is making the switch – Olympic gold and bronze medalist Cody Miller will continue to represent his childhood club Sandpipers of Nevada.
The arrangement is similar to one that the prior generation of the Indiana post-grad group had with the Badger Swim Club in New York. That arrangement involved the pros travelling to compete at LSC Championships for the Badgers.
That’s how Santa Clara won all those men’s national titles in the late 90s, using Stanford swimmers
Looks like Schubert is bringing in ringers because he’s lost many of his up and coming swimmers to other clubs.
This seems quite duplicitous in this regard. I feel that club representations should be limited to developmental age group teams, or current training site teams. Post grad or collegiate swimmers representing say “club wolverine” who train with UofM in Ann Arbor is acceptable. Or, it should be like the example referenced with Miller rep’ing Sandpipers. Maybe there should be a distance range applied to the representation: if the team you are representing is further than 30 miles from your known training site, you have to show past involvement with the program.
Either: some important board member has to be impressed by the “team results”, or its just simple marketing for MVN.
NYAC has a similar arrangement with a lot of swimmers not based in NY.
It’s interesting thinking about the relay options though…
Wow. Schubert found his way back to Mission Viejo. This sounds like an attempt at rebuilding the team back to its glory days of winning every National team title for decades before he left for Mission Bay, which is now quite literally buried under the ground.
Isn’t this arrangement good for both parties? MVN gets points and the publicity for the club, and the pros get financing to go to meets.
I love watching high level swimming, the athletes shouldn’t have to starve, or rely on their families to travel to national level meets. It is difficult to train and hold down a job. Props to the athletes for finding a way to keep going. They aren’t trying to hide anything, and their coaches seem to be behind it.
Get over it.
Exactly and who are they hurting?
It hurts clubs who can’t “buy” points and still would like to be competitive in the team races! If MVN can’t win titles on their own merits by developing them, then buy them!
Crazy I just realized Badger Swim Club isn’t the club team at IU. Do they have one if so what is it?
To my knowledge, they do not have a USA affiliated club team outside of the general IU team. Namely, the only athletes who represent the IU club team are the ones on the schools roster. I may be wrong though.
The Cunsilman Center Swim Team uses 2 of the on-campus pools, though they don’t list the main natatorium as a practice site: https://www.teamunify.com/Home.jsp?team=isccst
Most universities of this scope don’t have USA Swimming clubs that regularly train at their pool, outside of university and post-grads. That’s mostly because the demand for lane space is so high between swimming, diving, water polo (Indiana has varsity water polo), intramurals, collegiate club, and use by the student body (whose fees, incidentally, pay for the pools and their maintenance in most cases). Indiana actually has “open pool log rolling” at CBAC.
Indiana, fortunately, has I believe 5 different pools for use (one outdoor).
They were going by Indiana University Club Paradise at one point (apparently sponsored by Cheeseburger in Paradise), but the last reference I can find of that is from 2011.
From past meets it appears during the summer they represent Indiana Swim Team (IST) but I see no record of a real team. Much like how Stanford represents Stanford Swimming.
Coach Schubert is and has always been innovative and a fine marketeer. Best wishes to the athletes, Coach Looze and Mark Schubert.