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Missy Franklin is Committing to the Cal Golden Bears

Teri McKeever wins another one. Swimming superstar Missy Franklin has made her college decision, and will become a Cal Golden Bear next fall.

This is the move that a vast majority of the swimming community expected to happen. All of the signs were there: she fell in love with McKeever during the Olympics, they are the two-time defending champ, former Cal Bear Natalie Coughlin, is her hero; though many people had many thoughts on where she would end up, this decision will surprise very few in the swimming community.

Franklin, who won 4 gold medals and a bronze this summer at the Olympics. hasn’t really focused on a yards swim in years, despite insisting on swimming high school throughout her career (unlike her future Cal teammates Liz Pelton and Rachel Bootsma, who both sat out to focus on Olympic dreams). We still have some good measures of times for her, keeping in mind that her most recent High School Championship was swum in a shallow pool. Still, Franklin probably isn’t as good in yards as she is in long course, but that doesn’t stop her from being the best recruit in this class.

In yards, she’s been 22.25/47.94/1:43.15: all three of which are the fastest in the class. That 100 free time, in fact, was done at Sectionals when she was only 14 and a freshman in high school.

In the backstrokes, She’s been 52.30 and 1:51.07 – again the best in the class, and again both done when she was very young. Her 100 free, 200 free, and 100 back are all National Independent High School Records (though the 100 free stands at only 48.39 – her best in high school competition).

Her 1:55.32 in the 200 IM and 4:08 in the 400 IM, both from off-taper meets as a sophomore, would also give her cause to contend for NCAA finals in her first year.

Still, Franklin is a bit of a mystery as to how much she will immediately contribute to Cal’s scoring. Obviously, the answer begins with “a lot,” but she’s by no-means guaranteed to come in as an NCAA Champion. That’s in part due to three of her teammates, Pelton, Bootsma, and two-time defending NCAA 100 back champ Cindy Tran, all of whom are masters of short course and who could go 1-2-3 in the 100 back at this year’s NCAA Championships.

Still, it will be a fun experiment to see how exactly McKeever uses these three swimmers, all of whom have a high probability of making the 2016 Olympic Team. Will she leave them all in the 100 backstroke, or will one of them swim the 100 fly instead? Will Missy focus on the freestyle races? And what about the medleys, where all three are more-than-capable of swimming either backstroke, butterfly, or freestyle?

Let the fun begin. Good luck beating Cal for an NCAA title, at least for the next two years. She has hinted publicly to local news that her plan is to swim collegiately for two seasons, and then turn pro in time to capitalize on the 2016 Olympic rush.

These four are just the tip of the iceberg for what McKeever has in her stable, with one of the class’ best sprint freestylers (Kristen Vredeveld). In the bigger recruiting scheme, now that the two mega-pieces are off of the table (Franklin and fellow Olympian Lia Neal), and as a matter-of-fact all of our top 10 for the women, coaches will begin scrambling to fill out there classes. It’s likely that several teams were holding a lot of scholarship money open for Missy, and will now try and use multiple second-tier recruits to fill those positions.

We’ll also find out about what McKeever and Cal can pull in to finish out their class: she only has a small handful of public recruits so far, and we still think she needs to find a breaststroker.

Franklin also visited Texas and Georgia, but passed on an upcoming visit to USC.

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Swimmy the Greek
12 years ago

Cal has Meliisa Bates and Kong in addition to
Young for next year so far. UCLA probably by choice has remained just a very good unranked (2011) national and PAC-12 school.
Just behind too many other schools in a very tough PAC 12 to be concerned about CAL until
proven otherwise at the pac12 and NCAA championships.

jim
Reply to  Swimmy the Greek
12 years ago

By choice? Huh? Any relation to Jimmy?

GOLDENBEAR
12 years ago

Taylor Young from the Santa Rosa Neptunes just committed to Cal, she is an Olympic Trials caliber breastroker!!

jim
Reply to  GOLDENBEAR
12 years ago

She’s a good swimmer. Her and Li will add some strong breastroke talent to Cal which after this year will be needed. UCLA did just as well with breastrokers getting the #1 Californian in the 100 breastroke (Burton) and #3 (Tse). Both are top 5 in the 200 (Li and Young #1 +#2). Pac-12 continues to strengthen.

MissyFan
12 years ago

Hawkeye – maybe you should go back and read all of the other articles Braden has written on this. Dont recognize your username so maybe youre a new reader but all of the above issues have been addressed. Missy has a former Stars teammate at both Cal and Georgia, Missy actually has lots of former training partners with both programs thanks to the OLYMPICS and Kara Lynn Joyce definitely doesnt swim at Georgia anymore. This isn’t a normal recruitment where things like former hs teammates carry massive weights.

Also, Missy’s boyfriend committed to texas long before she scheduled a visit there, she only scheduled a visit there after a former GEORGIA coach took over the head coaching job. Do you… Read more »

HawkeyegonetoCO
12 years ago

Hmmm…I don’t think this article was very well-researched. Braden Keith left out a serious factor in Missy’s decision: her former Stars teammate, Englewood native, and friend Kelly Naze is a freshman at Cal.
Also, perhaps Missy’s to attend Cal wasn’t as much of a “slam dunk” as the media would have us believe. Missy and Georgia alum Kara Lynn-Joyce trained extensively together when Lynn-Joyce spent time post-Georgia as a member of the Stars club. Plus Missy’s boyfriend, John Martens, is a freshman swimmer at Texas. Funny how the only 3 schools Missy visited were Cal, Georgia, and Texas…

berzerkeley no more
12 years ago

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Gentler-Berkeley-has-priorities-straight-3982605.php

great article about modern day berkeley! All you haters step off…

sleeh
12 years ago

“…despite insisting on swimming high school throughout her career (unlike her future Cal teammates Liz Pelton and Rachel Bootsma, who both sat out to focus on Olympic dreams).” Kind of an unfair dig at Bootsma, and possibly Pelton. I understand CO allows high school swimmers to train with their clubs and compete with high school–not the case in MN, at least. Club coaches cannot train a swimmer while they are competing in high school. So, if that were the case in CO, Franklin might have sat out high school, too.

cynthiacurran
12 years ago

Well, people do think about sterotypes when comes to religion. I bet the bay area has more Eastern Orthodox Christians than lets’s say Orange and San Diego which don’t as many immirgants from eastern europe. Also, because of Rick Warren people think of Orange and San Diego being evangelical but a lot of folks there according to pew don’t attend church about 6 percent below the national average. Both north and south have more folks that belong to non-christian religions probably around 6 percent versus 3 percent nationally.

Swimmy the Greek
12 years ago

PAC12 crazy good. CAL, USC, Stanford, Az, Az State
all top 25. Take that SEC.

SEC_G8R
Reply to  Swimmy the Greek
12 years ago

The SEC will have at least 5 in the top 25, maybe more (UF, UA, TAMU, UT, and UGA…maybe mizzo, and bama

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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