Following up on the news yesterday that Hong Kong national record holder Siobhan Haughey will be moving from DC Trident to Energy Standard for the second International Swimming League (ISL) season, the Turkey-based squad announced another valuable new member for 2020.
Versatile Hungarian Zsuzsanna Jakabos represented Team Iron during the inaugural ISL season, joining a hugely Hungarian-bent squad, which also touted captain Katinka Hosszu, Szebasztian Szabo, Adam Telegdy and Kristof Milak among those from the nation.
However, she’ll be changing team colors for season 2, joining Kliment Kolesnikov, Ilya Shymanovich and Anastasiya Shkurdai, repeat members already announced by Team Energy Standard.
30-year-old Jakabos earned a total of 46.0 points over just 3 stops of the meet circuit, as Team Iron was not one of the final teams who battled it out in Las Vegas for the overall trophy. More specifically, Jakabos finished the season as her squad’s 8th highest point earner and 4th highest point capturing woman on Team Iron.
“Our next swimmer is new to our team this year but will be a great addition with her versatility in many events. Hungarian @zsuzsubell 🇭🇺!,” read Energy Standard’s Instagram post published today, Saturday, March 7th.
Season 2 of the ISL is expected to bring two additional new teams, with a significant increase in the number of meets from 7 to 27, running from September to April.
So what? It is a loss but no big loss.
You see only some initial steps of making more clubs and more nationally oriented teams. Energy Standard is just a hub in this process. I’m wondering where they will get that many new swimmers for new clubs if there would be no East Asian swimmers. With the increase of population of ISL the time limits will be most likely removed. If ISL survives and proves to be profitable then I think American teams will form their own league.
They will have a swimmer from HongKong and probably Seto is gonna be back. I really want to see swimmer like pipe I Watanabe, Xu Jiayu, Irie, Koseki, Ye Shiwen in ISL though.
There’ll be a Japanese team so I’d imagine Japanese intend to join the league.
I suspect it is a very easy rationale for why the big names are moving to Energy Standard…. Because the ISL is not a times based format, it is a placement based format. So everyone wants to be on the top team, because that is where the prize money is at.
The format is fine, that it isn’t time based… But the ISL seems to be really lacking in structure. I. E. Mainly a roster cap and a team spending limit. There needs to be a level of parity introduced so the meets stay competitive.
I agree with the other comments that the meets will become very stale if they all get dominated by a single team. Maybe not for… Read more »
This is getting dumb. Everyone wants to be on the winning team and no one wants to watch anymore because we obviously will know who wins
I’m trying to reserve judgement until we see who they may have lost. Maybe a couple of their big stars went elsewhere. If not…oops.
Where can we find “any” info on the signing protocol for the upcoming season? You would think from a marketing perspective ISL would announce some kind of date (s) reflecting this to actually generate a buzz of anticipation.
All jokes aside if Energy Standard just keeps adding bigger names and doesn’t lose any of their biggest swimmer since they are apart of the club it will just ruin it for spectators. No one likes to see one team completely dominate and take out all of the wonder and mystery of a close competition. Hopefully they will also lose some of their big names but the way it looks at the moment, it will just be a case of people complaining that next year needs changes to squad selection before this year has even finished.
Someone should tell the other teams that free agency has started
Incoming:Every swimmer moves to energy standard