One interesting trend this year in boys swimming was the lack of break-out freshmen in both divisions. Sure, there were some -- notably Alex DeLakis of Eau Claire, Alex Swain of Waukesha South/Catholic Memorial, and Spencer Mattox of Janesville Craig in D1, and Al Nenning of Grafton in D2.
Boys, of course, develop later than girls, who sometimes show up at state meets as freshman and win state titles right off the bat. Still, it's notable how few freshman boys qualified individually for the state meet this year compared to the past few years.
Here's a look at the number of individual freshman qualifiers in the past four years:
D1:
2010 -- 7 individuals, three who qualified in two events.
2009 -- 10 total, eight in two events.
2008 -- 13 total, five in two events.
2007 -- 15 total, six in two events.
D2:
2010 -- 4 individuals, one who qualified in two events.
2009 -- 9 individuals, five in two events.
2008 -- 12 individuals, seven in two events.
2007 -- 10 individuals, four in two events.
Thoughts?
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It would be very interesting to see the same analysis for the girls as well.
I would be interested to see how many seniors qualified in individual races as most teams I've seen seem to be senior heavy. Of course older swimmers should make up more of the individual qualifiers. For example of Bays 12 individual qualifiers(swimming) 10 are swum by seniors.
This year's seniors are an incredibly deep class across the state, as can be seen in the high 2007 numbers. Numerous members of the class of 2010 have already been to the state meets and Drives, for example, already has a D1 record. I think next year's freshman success rate will be much higher than this year's due to all the graduation, but then again, all the other classes will move up as well. Even D2 teams like Shorewood and Whitefish Bay, among others, had freshman who didn't go to sectionals this year, but probably would have scored. So I don't think it's a weakness in the class, rather the strength and vast depth of all the seniors.
Quick and dirty calculation of seniors in 2010, 2009 and 2008 D1 state finals (including divers):
2008 -88
2009 - 75
2010 - 93
This goes hand-in-hand with faster qualifying times. As the quality of the state meets increase we should expect a larger percentage of upperclassmen to qualify.
I would agree the senior class this year is very strong. It may also be possible that there are many freshmen this year who are a young 14 vs an old 14 or even 15 year old freshman who are simply not physically strong enough yet to compete with the juniors and seniors. It would be interesting to see the age break down from a historical perspective to see if this has any bearing on the diminished number of freshmen at the state meet. Hopefully the testosterone will kick in and we will see a strong sophomore class next year.
Most likely the large number of excellent swimmers from the prior years and the subsequent drop in qualifying standards has lead to fewer freshman.
One thing worth noting for D1 is that in two events freshman with the 24th fastest time were bumped by automatic qualifiers. In the 200 free David Wright of Waukesha West/Mukwonago would have qualified 24th with a time of 1:50.14 and Trevor Manz of Eau Claire would have qualified 24th with a time of 2:02.47. That brings the swimming only totals to 8 individuals, 4 in two events.
*correction, that should read Trevor Manz 24th in the IM.
You really need to compare freshman times with previous years rather than look at number of qualifiers. Was it a weak freshman class this year or a stronger junior/senior class?
"You really need to compare freshman times with previous years rather than look at number of qualifiers."
I thought of that, but would argue the number of state qualifiers is a better measure. State qualifying times in the aggregate are getting faster, and thus I think it makes sense to see if freshman are meeting the challenge of needing faster times to qualify for state. After all, qualifying for state is a pretty good measure of a particular grade's depth of quality.
Having said that -- and without running the numbers -- my sense is that this year's freshmen were competing for state bids against a combined junior/senior class that's pretty strong. Those two classes included 28 swimmers combined (D1) and 22 combined (D2) who made it to state their freshman year (and that doesn't include some very good seniors, like Sauk's Friede and Lentz, who didn't swim as freshmen in high school.)
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