Unknown GREATEST Swim Success Story

The men and women's NCAA championships just wrapped up, and I've got a hot take. The most impressive swims of the championships. It's not what you think. It's not Josh Luendo, not Leon Marchand, not what you think. Strap in, let me give you my hot take. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to my home natatorium pool. Today is April 2nd. Yesterday was April Fool's Day. Texas announcement was wild. And I'm fresh off the men's NCAA swimming championships, so I thought I'd give you my quick recap. These are just all the things that I was thinking about during the swim. By the way, the practice I just did is right there. That's what I just finished. And right there is the set that I'm doing tonight. Tonight is like the meat and potatoes. This morning is just a little bit of flushed out, a little bit of easy swim. Crazy to think that we are 11 weeks away from US Olympic swimming trials. Nuts. For me, training is going well. I had a little setback last week. I got one of the daycare bugs. Little TMI here, but I was pooping for two days straight. Just straight liquid. It was horrible. Couldn't swim, couldn't do anything. Just couldn't leave the toilet. But I'm better now. And I had a fantastic weekend watching the men's meet. And that's what I want to talk to you very quickly about right now. Before we get started, I should say, I am going to do like a full, crazy, analytical, in-depth breakdown for the nerds. If you're a super nerd, it will be on the Cody Miller Show, exclusively on the USA Swimming Network. Coming soon, where I break down all the top 10 races, men's and women's competitions. This is just, like I said, my quick thoughts that I was thinking about during this practice. Because, I mean, the meet just ended. I've got to say, it was one of the most fun competitions I've ever watched. For sure. Like, it might be number one. It was so much fun for so many different reasons. Obviously, like, I got to see a lot of my friends that I swam with in college, a lot of alumni. I got to spend a little bit of time with Rowdy up in the booth, which was super fun. He even told me that in the coming years, you know, he wants to have me in the booth with him to do some commentating, to get a little practice. Which, you know, that's something that I would love to do later on in the future, someday. Because I just love this swim nerd stuff. I love analytics and explaining to people why things are exciting, why things are fun. And that's one thing that I think Rowdy does exceptionally well, which is why he's been the guy forever. So, that was a lot of fun. So, for me, as an Indiana fan, the meet was a blast. I'm very proud of the Indiana team in general. Here's why. Collectively, I think the IU swimming team, men and women, had the best season maybe they've ever had before. They both won the Big Ten Championships. The women's team got seventh place this year, which they tied their highest placement ever in the country. The men's team got fourth place by two points. Their highest finish ever is third place in the modern swimming area. Obviously, they won national championships in the 60s and the 70s. However, back then, I don't think the women's team was quite as good. So, aggregate together, I think an argument can be made that it's the best that they've ever been. Which is, like, I'm very proud of the coaching staff and my friends and the athletes on my team. Watching the competition, it just, I don't even know where to start. I mean, let's just say Leon Marchand is, I think, definitively become the greatest NCAA swimmer of all time. I don't think that it's really up for question anymore, his performances across the board. Not just his unexpected 40.200 freestyle lead-off, his 128.200 freestyle. Here's something to wrap your brain around. The 100 freestyle and the 200 freestyle that he swam, those, the fastest time ever in the 200 and the second fastest time ever in the 100 leading off that relay, that was the first time he's ever raced those races shaved. Like, those aren't even in his top four best events. First time ever shaved and literally went, like, isn't that kind of crazy? Like, flat start. That's crazy. I got to give away the awards for the men's 200 breaststroke and it was really cool being able to give Leon his gold. Being able to give one of my teammates, Jason Yep, his seventh place award. I'm gonna circle back to that in a minute because that was maybe my favorite moment of the competition. Hard to contextualize a 402 in the 500 free, that was bananas. Luke Hobson won the 200 freestyle again and rebroke the NCAA record, also going 128. That was one of the most impressive swims of the competition because that was after multiple races. Oftentimes you see records set on night one of the competition when everyone's fresh. You know, Wednesday night, the four by 200 freestyle, the lead off, those times are usually the fastest because they're fresh. By the time you get to the individual 200 freestyle, those freestylers have mostly already done the 500s. So Luke Hobson set the 200 freestyle record after swimming two 500s and multiple events. He was already tired. Like that, that is, that's cool. I was sitting in the stands with Blake on the Friday night and the men's 100 breaststroke was about to start and Blake turns to me and he goes, this is probably gonna be the most uneventful or like the least fast of all the events tonight on paper. And I would have agreed with him before the event. I was like, yeah. And then the event happened and Cal's Liam Bell just, he breaks the NCAA record. You know, my former teammate, Ian Finnerty was the first guy to ever go 49 seconds in the 100 yard breaststroke. And Bell just broke that. Like kind of out of nowhere, dropped the full second from his prelim swim. Amazing swim. And the heat overall was very, very fast. That was one of the most surprising and really cool races. Like watching Dave Durden's head coach of Cal, his celebration when he won that race was one of my favorite moments. Like I rewatched the event on TV because I'm a nerd and that was just so cool. Speaking of the 100 breaststroke, Leon's 100 breaststroke relay split. 40, 48. Like I can confirm, I'm sure Swim Swam has probably already gotten into this, but we had higher expectations for Leon's 400 IM time. I was talking to Rowdy and Rowdy said he talked to Bob and Bob, coach Bowman said, Leon, don't go all out on this. Just win this race. Save it for the relay. Cause they were trying to win the relay and it paid off. It paid off. ASU won. As far as the team competition goes, I'm very proud of the ASU team. It was really exciting. And, you know, honestly in the race for first place, I was rooting for ASU. It's really cool to see a university win their very first national championship, right? Like watching the climb, the climbing of the ranks over the years under the Bowman era there, insanely exciting. And that was really cool. Wild that on April Fool's, they announced the head coach of Texas, which has been the number one question in the swimming world for about a decade. Who's going to replace Eddie Reese? Well, now we know it's Bob. And I didn't, I don't think anybody believed it at first, but so that's kind of wild. So seeing what happens now that Herbie has been promoted to head coach, that's going to be really exciting and interesting. He's clearly a very capable, very successful, smart guy. So very cool. Now for me personally, the IU team was in a little tight battle for third place with Florida and it came down to the last relay. And ultimately Florida ended up beating us by just enough to clinch the third place victory. So the men's team got fourth. So I had just a blast watching that battle. Obviously one of my very, very, very best friends, Annie Lazor is now a coach there that you've all seen a million times in the vlog. And so she and I were kind of talking crap to each other throughout the meet. She was like, for the first time in our life, like we are truly at war here. Now the biggest standouts of the competition to me, outside of the record setting times, the Leon Marchand NCAA setting times and all that stuff, it's the story of the underdog. Those are always my favorite. The story of the underdog. It's the story of the people who were never expected to make the competition. The people that were never expected to swim at that level. People that exceed their expectation level and exceed what most people presume to be their talent level. And there's a lot of athletes that I put in this category where I see people in finals getting fourth and fifth places that when they were in high school, when they were being recruited, you never would have expected them to be that good. And those are the success stories that I cherish so much. And there's a number of these. And like I said, I'm gonna do a whole long video about this on my podcast, on the Cody Miller Show. But quickly, two success stories. One, Jason Yip getting seventh place in the tuna breaststroke. That's a guy who out of high school wasn't recruited by very many Division I schools. That's a guy who I believe was like a 158-ish out of high school. Forgive me, Jason, if that's not the correct time. But over his time here at Indiana, he's dropped eight seconds, is now a Big Ten champion, and is now an NCAA A finalist. This is a guy that no one, like Lily and I were talking about this, like no one would have expected that three years ago or even a year ago. And now he's one of the best in the country. Now he's in an NCAA All-American. Another training partner of mine, Max Reach. He's another guy. I believe both of them, I don't think they're scholarship athletes. Once again, forgive me if I'm wrong if they're a little bit, but I think they're both considered walk-ons, which means most Division I programs passed on them. And they were not expected to make that competition, let alone score. And Max scored in the B final. Max is an All-American runner-up at the NCAA Championships over the course of dropping nearly 10 seconds in his event. Those are the stories to me that I think are the greatest success stories for coaches. Like for Ray Luz, for example, for my coach, the coach of our breaststroke group, head coach of Indiana, it's being able to point to those guys, those athletes and say, hey, they were basically nothing. No disrespect to them, but they were basically nothing. And now look at how good they are. It's one thing to be able to point to your all-stars, like your Brendan Burns, who won the 100-yard backstroke out of lane eight, which was once again really cool for Indiana. Very, very exciting winning the 100 backstroke, repeating his title. But Brendan was one of the best swimmers in the country out of high school. We had high expectations for him. That's a full scholarship athlete. And it's a great success. But to me, the cooler, the more exciting, and the thing that I think that coaches can point to and say, this is why I'm a good coach, is something like what Jason Yett did getting seventh and what Max Reach did getting a B final score in that event. Like those, the story of the underdog. And there's a lot of those. Those are just the two main standouts to me, obviously because I swim with those guys and they're buddies of mine. And I'm just truly, really, really proud of them. So, you don't have to be number one in the world. You don't have to be the best in the country. You don't have to be an NCAA champion to be, in my eyes, the biggest success story of a program or the most successful athlete in the pool. I really believe that. All right, those are my quick thoughts, y'all. Let me know what you all think in the comment section below. What was your favorite event of the men's or the women's championships? I didn't even talk about the women's meet yet. Like I said, sorry, I'm just coming off the men's meet, so that's what's fresh in my brain. We'll get into more of this soon. More training videos come. Let me know down there below. Let me know. Let's have a conversation. Let's talk about this meet. As always, make sure you hit that subscribe button if you want a personalized video from me to you or someone you know for whatever reason. If you'd like a video from me, I'm available on Cameo. We do have merch on the merch store, new videos coming. And until my next one, thank you so much for joining me. I will see you all later.