Arizona State swimming’s solution for coronavirus uncertainty: Redshirt the entire team
About a week ago, a radical solution came to mind: Every member of the swimming and diving roster will redshirt during the 2020-21 school year. That means they have a clear focus for the first time in months. The athletes will prepare for next summer’s Olympic trials and the Tokyo Games, knowing they won’t compete at the college level until the 2021-22 season.
Not long after Pac-12 Championships, the NCAA swimming season — and for some athletes, their college careers — came to an abrupt end. Skipping the upcoming season ensures that will not happen again.
“Those kids didn’t get an extra year of eligibility like the spring sports did,” said Bowman, the longtime personal coach of Michael Phelps and the 2016 U.S. Olympic men’s team head coach. “So we just lost the [NCAA] championship. I was like, ‘We cannot do that with our best people. They cannot lose two out of four.’ That was a big part of the thinking.”
Bowman began considering who the program should redshirt this year. It seemed natural to preserve a year of eligibility for the team’s top scorers, but then Bowman thought, “Why don’t we do it for everybody?”
This plan that Bowman developed about a week ago was well-received by the athletes and their parents. Bowman pitched his idea up the chain of command — through Arizona State’s athletic department, the compliance office, the university president and the conference — before the school announced the decision Sunday evening.
Arizona State has athletes in the 2021 class verbally committed to join the program, and they’ve been promised scholarships. Schools are allotted 9.9 scholarships to distribute among their men’s teams and 14 for women. But Arizona State didn’t use all of those available scholarships during the 2019-20 season, which mitigates the logistical hurdle. Bowman said the program didn’t have any scholarship divers this past season, even though typically some are allotted to diving.
“By some small miracle, it actually works out that we can do it,” Bowman said. “It would be tough for most [programs]. … We can move things around a little bit to make all the numbers work going forward.”
More than 20 swimmers in the Sun Devils’ program have already qualified for U.S. Olympic trials, now scheduled for June 2021. Jack Dolan, who was named the Pac-12 freshman swimmer of the year — as well as Emma Nordin and Zach Poti, who both won conference titles this year — are among those who have qualified. Grant House redshirted the 2019-20 season to train for the Olympic trials. Five swimmers train at Arizona State as postgraduates, including eight-time Olympic medalist Allison Schmitt.
The primary benefit of this decision, Bowman said, is the clarity it brings. The athletes know for which competitions they are preparing: Olympic trials, USA Swimming meets and the 2021-22 college season. With athletes out of the pool for an extended period this past spring, they can take the necessary time to work back to full strength without the pressure of a looming season that may or may not take place as scheduled.
“One of our big problems in this situation is the answer to every question is, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Bowman said. “That was fine for the first couple months, but after a while, school’s going to start. People are going to be coming back to campus. We have to make some decisions about what we’re going to do.”
The college swimming season typically runs from September to March. With conferences making adjustments to the fall sports calendar, it is unclear how swimming and diving programs could be affected. The Pac-12 recently announced that several fall sports, including football, will only play conference games this year, but swimming has not yet been affected.
The number of coronavirus cases in Arizona has risen through the two months. Arizona State plans to hold in-person classes on campus this fall, but remote options will also be available. Classes with more than 100 students will be held online only or with reduced class sizes. Many universities have similar models for the upcoming semester.
Bowman, who has led the Arizona State program since 2015, devised this solution for the program on his own, but after the school made its announcement, several college coaches reached out and told him they had also thought about mass redshirting.
“We didn’t do it because of that reason, but it is a very good savings in a time when we really need the savings,” Bowman said. “It definitely was a plus once we looked at the whole picture.”
The NCAA usually only allows athletes to redshirt once during their college career. For Arizona State athletes who have already taken a redshirt year, Bowman said he expects “wide latitude in this environment for them to get another waiver.” With athletes on campus for five years, many will be able to pursue graduate degrees, which Bowman described as “a very positive part of this.”
The program’s swimmers and divers are still training at club facilities, but Bowman hopes Arizona State’s pool can open soon. Even then, athletes will have a choice about when they return to campus.
“I think the parents felt relieved that we could finally have some clarity about what we could do going forward,” Bowman said. “The best part about this whole plan is it gives ultimate flexibility to families to make decisions about what they want to do in this situation.”
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