This week, we have a guest submission from Senior Coach Benji DeMotte

Which is more important for college recruiting, high school or club swimming?

This is a question that all Senior coaches are asked regularly and not a particularly easy one to answer. While Excel Aquatics is a USA Swimming team, we also have swimmers competing on over 30 different school teams throughout the year. In Tennessee, high school swimming is a little unique in that our school season is much longer than any other school sport and therefore the championships happen consecutively with our USA Swimming championships. Thus, many athletes feel the need to prioritize one set of meets over the other.

While we do place a high importance on both sets of meets, the meet that we emphasize the most is largely athlete dependent. While High School States is fast, fun and draws a lot of college coaches, it does have some limitations. Primarily the fact that college coaches are looking for athletes who can score in three events at their college conference meet. The high school format only permits swimmers to compete in two events therefore making it impossible to showcase any three. Our Southeastern Championships by contrast allow swimmers to compete in up to six individual events.

Additionally, the high school event lineup doesn't match the NCAA format. College conference meets typically include all the events that are at High School States plus the 1,650 free, the 400 IM and the 200s of strokes. Any athlete who specializes in any of those additional events is out of luck at any high school meet.

However, every year we also find that swimmers perform very well at the high school championship meet. The atmosphere is always exciting, the number of teams is more than we see at Southeasterns and ultimately school pride runs deep. Furthermore, while many college coaches will attend Southeasterns, they are ultimately only interested in high school age athletes so attending a meet with only those age swimmers may be a more attractive option for them. 

So with no easy answer to which format is more important to our athletes, the only answer left is that all of our senior swimmers should work with their coaches to create a championship plan. A clear pathway through this season will best set our swimmers up for success!

USA Swimming's Virtual Club Championship 

Heat Winner: Place in the top three swimmers in your age group for number of races won throughout the year. This award tends to favor those athletes that are attending meets, swimming a lot of events, racing hard but most importantly, improving throughout the year.  Winners will receive a "Heat Winner" bag tag.
IM Hall of Fame Level 1- Attain a Southeastern Championship Qualifying time standard in every event available for your age group.
IM Hall of Fame Level 2- Attain an Age Group Sectionals Championship Qualifying time standard in every event available for your age group.
IM Hall of Fame Level 3- Attain an NCSA Junior National Championship Qualifying time standard in every event available for your age group.  

Our Weekly Update for 1-31-25 has been released so check it out! You may have noticed that we are receiving intros from a wide variety of sources. Olympians, SEC Champions, officials, swim moms and vendors are just some of the folks who have made an appearance. If you are traveling and want to send us an intro from a unique location, we'll be sure to include it. Interested in seeing where they all come from so far? Check out Excel Aquatics from around the world below!

Looking for information on any of our coaches? Check out our Coaching Tab the website. If you have questions for a coach this will help guide you-

NCSA Junior National Qualifiers:  21
Age Group Sectional Qualifiers: 41
SES Winter Championship Qualifiers: 114
USA Swimming Virtual Club Rankings (~3,500 Teams):

SES Teams National Rankings
Excel #39
HSA #59
TNAQ #77
Ensworth #123
NAC #186

SwimCloud.com Excel Rankings in the SES Conference (73 teams):
8 & U Girls 1st 8 & U Boys 1st
9-10 Girls 1st 9-10 Boys 1st
11-12 Girls 1st 11-12 Boys 1st
13-14 Girls 2nd 13-14 Boys 1st
15-18 Girls 1st 15-18 Boys 1st

IM Hall of Fame: Achieved a cut in every event:
Level 1: SES Level 2: Age Group Sectionals Level 3: NCSA Junior Nationals
Owen Akard Brooklyn Lewis
Boston Boyd Boston Boyd
Jack Calhoun Gabe Gortarez

Gavin Chen Campbell Johnson
Caroline Dealy

Arden Ford
Gabe Gortarez
Josh Hession
Keaton Hubbard
Zaki Ibrahim
Campbell Johnson
Zara Kocak
Brooklyn Lewis
Chris McMurtray
Silas Rowe
Henry Schopfer
Charlie Turner
Bryce Winzenread

IM Tough Qualifiers
8 & Under  50 Fly, 50 Back, 50 Breast, 200 Free & 200 IM in the one season

Farley Beth Brown

Abi Brownyard

Savannah Copa-Brzozowski

Maya Foerster

Emily Georgieva

Walker Lewis
Bode Mello

Henry Reed

Addie Willard

9-10 100 Fly, 100 Back, 100 Breast, 200 FR, 500 Free & 200 IM in one season
Hayes Akard

Owen Akard

Artie Boyd

June Buffington

Ellery Carson

Elizabeth Conti

Savannah Copa-Brzozowski

Parker Dyatlovitsky

Arden Ford

Katy Francisco
Lily Furlong

Harper Grant

Emerson Grauzer

Lincoln Kelly

Walker Lewis

Chris McMurtray

Emma Nguyen

Leo Pantana

Lily Park

Abby Simkins

Hannah Simkins

Ryder Smith
Silas Rowe

Violet Vitale

Heat Winners 

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