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Emma Weyant of the Sarasota YMCA Sharks has verbally committed to the University of Virginia for 2020.
Weyant swam to an 8th place finish at U.S. Summer Nationals last year in the 400 IM. Her performance there qualified her for the 2018 Jr Pan Pacs, where she won gold in the event and bronze in the 800 free for Team USA. At the 2019 YMCA SC Nationals this month, Weyant won the 500 free, 1000 free, 200 IM, and 400 IM titles.
“Extremely excited to announce my verbal commitment to swim and study at the University of Virginia! I can’t thank my family, friends, coaches, and teammates enough for their endless support. GO HOOS!!!”
TOP TIMES
- 100y free – 50.00
- 200y free – 1:47.34
- 500y free – 4:43.80
- 1000y free – 9:39.41
- 1650y free – 16:30.02
- 200y breast – 2:15.45
- 200y IM – 1:58.07
- 400y IM – 4:07.63
- 200m free – 2:01.97
- 400m free – 4:12.62
- 800m free – 8:37.75
- 200m IM – 2:16.85
- 400m IM – 4:40.64
Representing Riverview High School, Weyant swam to 2018 FHSAA 4A state titles in both the 200 IM and 500 free.
When we did our rankings for the top 20 recruits in the 2020 class in April of 2018, the top 400 IM’er in the class was #11 Kathryn Ackerman at 4:10.20. She’s since dropped down to 4:07.79, just behind Weyant, and is a verbal commitment to Michigan.
Weyant has a good case to make the top 10 if we were to re-rank now. At this point last year, she was 1:49/4:45 in the free and 2:02/4:11 in the IMs– she’s made huge strides since then. In long course, her most impressive drop has been in the 400 IM, where she went from 4:48 to 4:40 in one year.
At the 2019 ACC Champs, Weyant would’ve made A finals in the 500 free, 200 IM, and 400 IM with her best times. She also would’ve made the 200 free B final, the 200 breast C final, and placed 12th in the mile. At the NCAA level, Weyant’s 400 IM time would’ve scored in the B final, less than three seconds out from the A final cut-off.
Weyant is the fourth verbal commit to the ‘Hoos’ class of 2024, and all four commits have NCAA-scoring times so far. #2 Alex Walsh has pretty ridiculous range: she has NCAA A final qualifying times in the 100 back, 100 breast, 200 breast, 100 fly, and 200 IM and would have been a B-finalist in the 50 free and 200 back. Additionally, #17 Anna Keating would’ve been five hundredths from making the 100 breast A final and #20 Abby Harter is quick enough to score in the 200 fly B final.
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Congratulations Emma! Kill it in Tokyo,
-Sherry and Mike
Her 400IM (especially meters) is incredible. Also, Let’s not forget that Leah Smith had an incredible career at UVA. It’s maybe not Cal or Stanford in terms of depth, but definitely a good program.
With these next 2 classes, I think they might be right there as far as depth when Miss Weyant steps foot on campus. Also, Leah did not train under this current coaching staff, but that really does not matter. They have had great success with the 400IM, although it was a male swimmer (Casey) and they have had great success with distance swimmers (again, all mostly male). Plus lets not forget Paige Madden and her success in the 500 this year.
Watching the 400 Im at last year JR Panpacs, it was clear that, win apart, Emma Weyant was a great prospect.
She seemed smooth, almost effortless, but was the fastest in the final free leg.
High chances to succeed in the 400 Im at national, and perhaps not only, level, in the next Olympic quadriennium.
Congratulations Emma…… spent the weekend in CVille with great athletes, teammates, coaches and families. Couldn’t be a nicer place to land!
The sharks are doing some great things. Great kids past, present and future!
Ira Klein rapidly deleting his cookies over and over to down vote this 7 times.
Are you going to re-rank at some point this summer?
They should. It is needed.
College swimming constantly updates their rankings, although theirs is only numbers based and as far as I know they dont count sprints more than distance (meaning they dont take relay contributions into consideration. But she is # 9 on that list. Odd that they update the rankings more than the actual commitments though, but that is probably because it is all an automatically updating algorithm that changes in real-time as times are improved.
Yes, Collegeswimming.com does weight sprints more than distance. But, they also include the 100 IM in their event rankings… so dumb and misleading. 99% of college teams never swim the 100 IM.
They also count both the 1000 and 1650 even though only one event is actually swam at a given college meet, be it dual or championship. Essentially it’s double counting the same event. This leads to artificially lower scores for distance swimmers.
Actually, that’s not the same at all. The 1000 is a legit event in dual meets and some conference meets! Some college conferences swim both the 1000 and 1650. That’s very different than a 100 IM that is swam at maybe 2 dual meets across the country and it’s really just for fun.
My point is the vast majority of dual meets and championship meets only the 1000 or 1650 is swum, not both. I haven’t seen or heard of any college meets where both are swam, but maybe there is an exception or two out there. CS definitely overvalues distance swimmers, and this is a big part of it.
Just about every D2 conference (and their NCAAs) have both the 1000 and the 1650…
^^ Exactly. Thank you DRSWIMPHIL.
They had a discussion on another commitment post I believe where they were saying they were going to and were hoping for end of April to post it. We will see.
She never followed me back on insta
Cool kids only
I’m cool
Congrats Emma! Great choice all around. Wishing you the best!
why did anyone downvote this?
Cal fans?