US Olympian and World Record holder Regan Smith has entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, opening up the possibility of competing in the NCAA again less than a season after turning pro.
Smith, who swam as a freshman at Stanford, currently trains at Arizona State University under Bob Bowman, where she has been racing well. Last week at the Westmont stop of the Pro Swim Series, she swam 57.64 in the 100 back, 2:03.99 in the 200 back, a personal best of 56.36 in the 100 fly, and 2:04.80 in the 200 fly. That included a new US Open Record in the 100 back as the fastest swim on American soil, and just .07 seconds shy of her own American Record.
Now there is a possibility that Smith returns to the NCAA system and competing for Arizona State.
As a freshman at Stanford, she won the NCAA title in the 200 back, was 2nd in the 200 fly, and 3rd in the 100 back. scoring 53 individual points for the Cardinals. After winning two gold medals at that summer’s World Championships, she announced that she was turning pro and forgoing the remainder of her collegiate eligibility.
Under new NIL rules, ‘turning pro’ for a swimmer doesn’t mean what it used to. Smith is allowed to maintain her endorsements as a collegiate athlete, though prize money is treated differently.
USA Swimming, though, like most nations, have found workarounds for student-athletes to receive prize money funneled through National Olympic Committees which can often make that moot as well.
It’s unclear how many seasons of eligibility Smith would have remaining. She has run two years off her five-year eligibility clock while training as a pro, so that would imply two seasons remaining, barring any special relief from the NCAA like granting an Olympic waiver.
Entering the transfer portal also doesn’t guarantee that she is going to transfer. We’ve seen at least one other US Olympian, Brooks Curry, enter the portal this season and ultimately decide not to race for the varsity side of his new training group at Cal.
The women’s side of the NCAA Division I swimming & diving transfer portal opened on Wednesday, and student-athletes have 45 days to enter the portal in order to be eligible to compete next season. Once entered, there is no limit on how much time they can take to make a decision. Smith’s entry is labeled with a “do not contact” mark, implying that she already has an idea of where she would swim.
Smith already deferred enrollment at Stanford to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She is currently 22, and would be 24-or-25 at her last NCAA Championship meet, depending on how much eligibility she has remaining.
Her presence would be a jump-start for the Sun Devil women, who are graduating their highest-profile swimmer Lindsay Looney at the end of this season. While the men’s program are the favorites to win this year’s NCAA title, the Arizona State women are projected to finish around 16th.
SwimSwam has reached out to Smith’s representatives for comment but have not heard back as of publishing.
The best way to complete a degree and not pay the hefty tuition is to compete! Unless it’s online.
Pitt
Is she following Bob to Texas?
No way he leaves ASU to Texas. His “grandsons” all live in AZ. The Phelps have put roots there.
ASU went from cutting the team to getting Bob to soon winning a NCAA title.
He ain’t going no where.
She’s transferring from Stanford where she used to be in rolled in to ASU.
It’s very simple.
Phelps can move too… he has the money… Austin isn’t a bad place. Texas wants a big name coach.
Austin is a zoo. Price of housing and traffic is nuts. And it’s Texas which is cray cray.
You and a couple other people are thinking like a peasant. Bob and Phelps have money to buy homes wherever they like. And they can fly whenever and wherever they want (first class!)
He could, but Bob was very clear his primary career goal after Phelps’ retirement was to take a program and build it from the ground up into a championship program. No way he’d want Texas over ASU.
things that aged poorly…
Relax everyone. Take a deep breath. The transfer portal she is entering is the breaststroke portal because she finally came to the realization that her chances of winning an individual Olympic gold medal in the backstroke and butterfly are on the precipice of hopelessness, after the emergence of Kaylee McKeown in the former, and Summer McIntosh in the latter.
All that setup for absolutely no punchline is crazy
Punchline implies joke. JoeB makes a legitimate point, whether you agree with it or not. Smith is inferior to McKeown in the backstroke and McIntosh in the butterfly.That leaves freestyle, IMs and breaststroke. Of those three, breaststroke seems the best option for her moving forward, if you take into account the talent in the freestyle and IMs. You ever wonder why a former world-record holder in an event would suddenly shift her attention to another event after being beaten consistently in her specialty?
idk I personally think the best options she has are the events she just swam 57.6, 2:03.9, and 2:04.8 in
If her goal is to continuously be a silver medalists at the Olympics and the World Championships in individual events, then absolutely she should continue on the same path. But all we can logically go by is what’s happened in the past, not what can or cannot happen in the future. It is best to choose facts over fantasy, and the current facts are that Kaylee is better than her in the backstroke and Summer is better than her in the butterfly. The mirror’s right there. The mirror still works. It’s just people refuse to look into it and see the real truth.
Is this Jalen?
^^^^Low IQ troll alert. ^^^^
I’m basing my posts on Tokyo and Fukuoka, where Kaylee McKeown swept the Olympic gold medals in the backstroke, then became the first woman to sweep the backstroke at the World Championships. And, the obvious. Kaylee is the world-record holder in the three backstroke events. Since you seem to believe I possess a low IQ, tell me once more how Regan Smith did in those events?
Trolling with facts? Hmmm. You Regan-holics definitely are something.
Is this an insecure Aussie or Canadian?
Gold medals. World Championship titles. World records. Which one, exactly, defines insecurity?
oh brother THIS GUY STINKS!!
Disappointed with the amount of Stanford elitism in this comment section
Same. This is a website about swimming/sir, this is a Wendy’s. I for one couldn’t care less about academics if Regan obviously doesn’t.
Ya but don’t forget:
In the discussion of which college is better than others, I’d like to point out that:
REGAN SMITH IS ALREADY A STANFORD ALUM (or alumna to be precise).
Just like Tiger Woods and Christian McCaffrey.
According to Stanford University guidelines, to be considered a Stanford Alumnus, one needs only to have successfully completed three full-time quarters.
That would make Claire Curzan a Stanford alumna as well.
Graduating from Stanford is a different story.
Stanford is so lame that you don’t actually have to graduate to be considered an alum… well it is a junior college after all—Leland Stanford Junior College.
Can this be true? Seems crazy–absurd. I thought the term “alumnus” applied only to graduates. And that
of course should be the standard. I can see where schools want to claim certainly prominent individuals as alums, even if they only attended the college/university for a year or two–but the proper way to describe them, it seems to me, is that they “attended” Stanford, and refrain from calling them alums.
Alumnus- a graduate or former student of a particular school, college, or university
It’s usually used to refer to graduates, but Stanford certainly isn’t redefining anything here
CHAT IS THIS REAL
My guess is ASU, UMich, UNC, or Texas
Carolina would love to have her but… let’s be realistic??