Marking a 4th verbal commitment to the Harvard class (all pending completion of the admissions process), Jack Boyd from Sweet Home Aquatics in New York has verbally committed to Harvard.
After starting this class with a lot of speed freestylers, the latest commitment for Harvard is primarily a middle-distance freestyler: Boyd has best times of 1:36.1 in the 200 yard free and 4:24.9 in the 500 yard free.
Those times could be potentially huge for the Crimson. His best in the 200 would’ve placed 3rd at last year’s Ivy League Championships, and his best in the 500 would’ve been 9th in a race where Harvard only had one swimmer (albeit a freshman, Steven Kekacs) in the A-Final at the conference meet.
He should immediately join Harvard’s 800 free relay as well. That relay was 22nd at NCAA’s last year, and half of it will be graduated by the time Boyd gets to campus.
Swimming for Canisius High School, Boyd broke the High School State Record that had been held by 2013 World Championship Team member Tom Luchsinger in the 200 free, and won both of those races.
Don’t sleep on Boyd’s speed, either, though. As a junior, he split 20.6 and flat-started 45.7 in the 50 and 100 yard freestyles.
In the last week, Edward Kim, Steven Tan, and Shane McNamara have all committed to Harvard.
The Harvard women seem to be picking up some great recruits as well.
Taken on its own, this posts’s title is far too amusing to me.
Harvard and North Carolina State have picked up some big time players in recruiting. It’s kind of nice to see this kind of parity that has permeated world swimming in the past decade start to filter down into the college ranks as well.