Fans across the world tune in with bated breath as the Olympic torch lights up and the procession marches through. For a few weeks every four years, eyes, ears, and hearts are captured by sports that spend most years on ESPN’s backburner. USA Swimming has especially combined unprecedented dominance with voracious fan enthusiasm. It could be the money poured into the athletes themselves, or the scale of pre-college swim competition across America.

The alternative explanation that the structure and scale of NCAA swimming provides the strongest developmental proving ground for young Olympians remains equally compelling. Swimmers from around the world coalesce every single year for high-level swim competitions right in America's own backyard.

There will be nine women swimming for Team USA in Paris this summer who are current NCAA swimmers, in addition to the handful of international athletes who train at a university in the States.

“The NCAA is the largest producer of elite swim talent,” said Greg Earhart, founder and CEO of Swimcloud. "We don’t just prepare our team; we prepare everyone’s Olympic team.”

Olympic-level talent is rare, but not every swimmer who wins NCAA national championships is of Olympic caliber. Coaches, first and foremost, must find key pieces for their program’s success.

“Your checks still have UVA on them,” said Earhart. “You’re recruiting for your collegiate system.”

To produce the talent that USA fans expect to see at the Olympics, the USA relies on universities to spend the money to scout and develop talent. Other countries do it differently and have government funding and talent identification for Olympic-caliber athletes. For some universities and swimmers, that means training in the NCAA is the best choice for them, while competing for another country.

American universities will spend $1.5 billion on Olympic sports, according to Earhart, as a consequence of the free market race to the top that collegiate sports represents.

For women in particular, because they develop and peak earlier in swimming, most coaches already know who could be on the Olympic path. Jack Hallahan is the publisher for Swimming World and experienced those developmental differences, having swam collegiately at Villanova in his youth.

“Swimming tends to be a sport where you see 15 and 16-year-olds embraced as world-class performers on the women’s side,” Hallahan said. “Once they get to college level, they’ve had the opportunity to compete nationally and internationally.”

Some experts estimate nearly four-fifths of Olympic Swim talent is identified before they set foot on campus.

The massive amounts of money being competitively spent throughout the system strengthens programs at all levels. Swimmers must ask themselves if it’s more important to be a part of a highly prestigious program or get the chance to compete regularly.

“Kids that went off to Western Kentucky or UC Irvine went and developed,” Earhart said.

Even as the NCAA and universities spend money to develop Olympians, a select few programs remain at the top. Even nationally renowned programs rise and fall in the rankings, and a roster bottleneck at the top programs remains because the resources of the top programs are so substantially stratified from that next small step down.

Big school or small, storied program or new kid on the block, developing within the NCAA system comes with limitations for the world’s best swimmers.

The Limit to the NCAA

Developing within the NCAA produces constraints that most national teams do not face. Limits on practice and facility time combine with competing classes and homework to limit our best.

“As a coach, I would have kids wanting to train for the Olympic team and would have to keep it on the down low.” Earhart said.

Braden Keith co-founded Swim Swam, an online publication and hub focused on all things swim, and watched carefully as each of the current Olympic-level swimmers grew and committed to college. Though he characterized schools as eaters more than feeders, the interplay between the two scenes is ever-present.

“They feed into each other, kids get into swimming seeing the Olympics but they stay in swimming because of college swimming,” said Keith.

Youth swimming integrates college coaches at the Olympic and Junior Olympic levels, but swimming is straightforward enough that there is less of a need for back channels and chicanery, as compared to other collegiate sports recruiting top athletes.

Jack Hallahan, publisher of USA Swimming partner magazine Swimming World, described Olympic trials in Indianapolis as ‘swim-a-palooza’. Lucas Oil Stadium averaged over 17,000 fans in the stands, feeling more like a three-day festival than a gritty preliminary contest while peaking at 23,000 fans on the final day.

Those stunning crowds sprang to their feet when star swimmers Gretchen Walsh and Regan Smith broke World Records at the Olympic Trials. Both received standing ovations upon exiting the pool, with competitors and collegiate teammates hugging them excitedly.

Building a Top Program

Jack Spitser

On display at Olympic trials was the shifting landscape of college swim, with historic programs falling off and more recent entrants into the elite tier snatching their place.

“I would have never in my entire life thought Virginia would produce the best swimming program in my lifetime,” said Hallahan.

Virginia has been building for a while, leveraging the connectivity that a small world like swim generates. Ella Nelson, a Junior Olympic medalist out of Nashville, committed to Virginia first. That brought friend and high school teammate Alex Walsh to Charlottesville the following year. When it was time for Alex’s younger sister Gretchen Walsh to commit, there only ever seemed to be one place to go.

“They’re going to get exposed to college coaches a lot earlier than other sports. Not that anyone is breaking the rules but the connections are getting built at national or junior national level,” said Keith. “There is in- person recruiting, but a swim time is a swim time. You can learn just as much from watching a swim on video as you can in person.”

Recruiting is less simple than ever before, as the NCAA change of recruitment’s opening date from July 1 before the senior year to a standardized June 15 after their sophomore year makes it so swimmers and their families want to commit and sign earlier and earlier in the process. For swim recruiters on the men’s and women’s side, according to Greg Earhart, the change has been disastrous.

“Any college coach would give five years of their career back to change recruiting back until waiting for the senior year,” said Earhart. “[The athletes are] more developed and better able to make a decision, and the school is more able to accurately evaluate the kid”

Coaches recruit for their system, athletes choose the best fit for their Olympic dreams, and schools get to tout international gold. The system is consistently described as a Wild West, but the Wild West is working out for some.

Virginia now has the momentum to secure key commitments and draw transfers from other high-quality Olympic athletes. Claire Curzan was swimming for power-house Stanford until she hopped in the portal to join her Olympic teammates in Virginia. It’s not enough to get Olympic level commitments, those athletes must be re-recruited into staying.

John Lohn is the current editor-in-chief of Swimming World and gets an exciting inside perspective from their Olympic trials coverage.

“The women’s team representing the United States is as stacked a team as there’s been for the last few Olympiads,” said Lohn.

As the stars of American swimming head off to Paris to attempt to dominate the competition again, seeing the universities they’re enrolled in next to their names reminds fans that these amazing swimmers are out there more than once every four years.

You may even see the Olympians return and jump right back into the pool, attempting to win a national championship to pair with their olympic gold. If they don’t, folks who enjoy swimming can still give the next crop a chance and potentially see the next generation of Olympic talent.

“This Olympics here, there will be several college swimmers that I hope take the time to find the place they need to be in after the Paris Olympics. ” Said Lohn. “I want them to take the necessary break for their mental health [...]. [Swimming] really is a constant lonely grind. I really hope the mental aspect is considered.”