An ‘A’ cut means an automatic ticket punched to the NCAA Championships. Swimmers that can register times faster than these cuts, especially before championship season in February or March, can be considered the cream of the crop. With the Stanford women’s swim team, the number of ‘A’ cuts that have been garnered already this season at the OSU Invite is leaps and bounds ahead of where they were last year, which is scary considering how good they were in 2015-16. Here’s a comparison between Stanford‘s ‘A’ cuts from 2015 to 2016, pulling information from right after the Cardinal’s mid-season invite meet from each year.
2015 ‘A’ CUTS
2015 Art Adamson Invitational
- Ella Eastin – 200 IM, 400 IM, 200 fly
- Sarah Haase – 100 breast
- Janet Hu – 100 back
- Lia Neal – 100 free
- Relays – 200 free relay, 400 free relay, 800 free relay, 200 medley relay, 400 medley relay
INDIVIDUAL: 6
RELAY: 5
TOTAL: 11
2016 ‘A’ CUTS
2016 Ohio State Invitational
- Ella Eastin – 200 IM, 400 IM, 200 fly
- Janet Hu – 100 fly, 100 back, 200 back
- Ally Howe – 100 back
- Katie Ledecky – 200 free, 500 free, 1650 free, 400 IM
- Simone Manuel – 50 free, 100 free, 200 free
- Relays – 200 free relay, 400 free relay, 800 free relay, 200 medley relay, 400 medley relay
INDIVIDUAL: 14
RELAYS: 5
TOTAL: 19
Stanford is certainly feeling the speed with Katie Ledecky finally on board and Simone Manuel returning from a red-shirt year. Ledecky added a whopping four ‘A’ cuts, including one in the 400 IM. Meanwhile, Manuel and Ella Eastin posted three ‘A’ cuts in their expected events. Janet Hu was perhaps the most impressive in a relative sense, adding two more ‘A’ cuts this year to finish with three as opposed to just one last year. In total, Stanford has 19 A cuts after the mid-season invitational compared to 11 last year. Expect more before NCAA’s, as freshmen like Allie Szekely, Erin Voss, and Katie Drabot continue to heat up in their first season with the Cardinal and senior Lia Neal gets into full gear.
Stanford has confirmed that they won’t be sending any swimmers to the 2016 U.S. Winter Nationals, meaning that their ‘A’ cut collection won’t be growing until the new year. You can still catch some of the Cardinal squad in action before 2017, however. Freshman Katie Drabot and sophomore Ella Eastin are set to compete at the 2016 FINA SC World Championships in Windsor, Canada next month, while the entire squad returns to NCAA competition in late January.
Other than, Katie Ledecky, Janet is the best on this team. I know that Simone seems to get a lot of press but i think Janet could beat her in her races tbh. They need Janet too much in the fly and back so they probably don’t have her training much free, but if she did I don’t think Simone would be all that talked about
While I do think that Hu is an unsung hero on this team, is it that absurd that Simone gets a lot of press? She’s the American record holder in the 100 free in long course and short course yards, and she just became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
Hu is a fantastic sprint freestyler but I don’t think she’s at Manuel’s level.
Manuel has a ways to go before she matches Hu’s accomplishments.
In SCY, Hu is fantastic. Her underwater off the wall is very good. Her work above the water afterwards need to improve if she wants to excel in LCM. She hasn’t done well in LCM because there are not enough walls for her to push off to gain advantages over competitors. I would love to see her do well in LCM because I think she is a fantastic and consistent swimmer. Remind me of Felicia Lee.
Probably the discussion should be about who’s going to get second at NCAAs – could be a record gap between Stanford and second place.
Janet Hu is the unsung hero on that team if you ask me. Incredibly consistent swimmer who gives Stanford so many options on the relays.
Thank you for the analysis, Karl!
I agreed. Thanks for this article. I wish Karl would do the analysis for the B-cut as well just to compare this year and last year. Please indulge the fans.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too! I know that most members of the freshman class snapped up at least 1-2 B cuts each, especially Drabot. Szekely was incredibly close in 400 IM to the A cut.
Additionally, Lia Neal was very close to A cuts in the sprints. Howe, Byrnes, Voss definitely picked up some B’s.
I don’t know if this needs much analysis– there were a ton of B cuts, and definitely more than last year.
Yeah, I know. Ha ha ha. I just want to read about it and see how close those B would be converted to A. I wish Stanford would attend the Winter National. Wanna see Howe, Drabot, Voss and Byrnes get the A cuts.
What’s the big deal with the A cuts? The swimmers you’ve mentioned are already 100% assured of being invited to the meet. No extra bonus points for A cuts. Now the focus for them is all about getting it done in Indy.
Yup, you are right. But at least the A-Cut means they would go for sure. With the B-Cut, you will never know for sure. You might be in the bubbles.
The A-Cut also signifies that the swimmers have an excellent time meaning they might have to drop a few more seconds (esp. longer distance) to reach the A-Cut. That means more work needs to be done.
I would love to see that the Stanford Breaststrokers (Poppe and Williams) can attain the A-Cut. That means they would have to drop to 59s low range. I think, however, Lilly King will probably sweep the breaststroke events at NCAA.
Perhaps just as important, they already have 13 swimmers with marks that will pretty certainly get invited to NCs, and time to maybe add a couple of more swimmers that are close. That’s also a big improvement over the just 9 swimmers that they took to the NCAAs last year when they finished a close 2nd.
6 of the 8 A cuts are from Ledecky and Manuel, who weren’t swimming for Stanford last year.
Yes that’s true. As a team, they are well ahead of where they were last year.