CROSBIE: Virginia’s historic success is a double-edged sword – The Cavalier Every day

In his first few years with Virginia swimming, Coach Todd DeSorbo’s message to blue-chip ladies’s recruits was easy — come to Virginia and make historical past. Prior to their first nationwide championship in 2021, cellphone calls have been being made in a trophyless workplace, promising banners that didn’t but exist.

In DeSorbo’s years of tenure main as much as the Covid-19 pandemic, this system gained a single ACC title in 2018. The Cavaliers had by no means completed higher than fifth at NCAAs — however DeSorbo’s first full recruiting class in 2019 was the one which started to vary the tide.

During this time, Virginia might promote one thing no person else within the conventional prime echelon might — an opportunity to be the primary. Recruits like Kate Douglass and the Walsh sisters have been basically instructed, positive, you possibly can go to Stanford with 11 NCAA titles, to Texas with seven, to Cal with 4. Or you possibly can come to Virginia and make historical past.  

Fast ahead to 2025, and the ladies have now gained 5 straight NCAA titles and 5 straight ACC championships, routinely setting NCAA and American information. DeSorbo can not promote the possibility to win a primary title to recruits. Instead he sells the possibility to win a sixth consecutive title — the primary run of its form in NCAA ladies’s swimming historical past — and extra. 

So, what occurs with recruiting when the tables have turned all the best way round?

The recruits DeSorbo talks to now are principally highschool juniors — swimmers who gained’t arrive on Grounds for one more two years. If you’re a highschool swimmer who watched Virginia hoist the NCAA trophy for a fifth time, you’re not being recruited for title quantity six. You’re being recruited for title eight or 9.  

No ladies’s swimming and diving program has ever pushed this sort of run, so it turns into more durable and more durable to image your self strolling right into a locker room chasing an eighth or ninth consecutive championship. For them, DeSorbo’s gross sales pitch might begin to bump up in opposition to the boundaries of plausibility. 

These elite teenage recruits are aggressive by nature. Joining the perfect workforce within the nation is enjoyable, however being a part of the category that ends a dynasty — and a category that headlines a brand new one — could be much more interesting to some. Virginia’s personal historical past truly backs that up.

Back in 2018, DeSorbo’s recruiting pitch in some way landed the No.1 prospect within the class of 2019. Kate Douglass, who’s now an NCAA report holder, world report holder and Olympic Champion, went in opposition to the grain by pledging to the Cavaliers. Back when she was a junior in highschool, most insider recruiting websites had her heading to Stanford — the secure and apparent alternative for a top-tier recruit.  

Douglass had each cause to select the Cardinals and slot right into a dominant program with confirmed success. Instead, she selected the riskier possibility and helped drag an bold ACC underdog to the higher echelon of the game. 

Around Douglass’ dedication, DeSorbo constructed out a complete core in his first Virginia recruiting class, highlighted by then-No. 8 recruit Margaret “Ella” Nelson who additionally purchased in early. Not lengthy after got here the Walsh sisters — Alex in 2020 after which Gretchen in 2021 — who shaped the spine of the dynasty as we now comprehend it. By 2021, the Cavaliers broke by for his or her first nationwide title in Greensboro, N.C.. 

For some time after that, it felt like each time SwimSwam up to date its swim community-famous “Way Too Early” recruit rankings, no less than one future Cavalier sat on the highest line. But as faculty swimming edges into the post-Walsh period, the recruiting map all of a sudden seems to be much more crowded.

On paper, the explanations to select Virginia these days are apparent. But now, the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3-type abilities you’d instinctively pencil in for Virginia on this period are scattering throughout the nation. SwimSwam’s up to date rankings for the women’ class of 2027 have Audrey Derivaux — a four-time World Junior champion with NCAA A-final worthy occasions and the consensus No. 1 recruit within the nation — heading to Texas. 

The No. 3 swimmer in that very same class, Fairfax, Va. medley star Sadie Buckley, can be verbally dedicated to the Longhorns. The prime freestyler within the class, No. 2 Rylee Erisman, whose occasions would already play in NCAA relays and finals, lately reclassified from 2027 to 2026 and selected California.  

If you’re a phenom staring on the present faculty swimming panorama, selecting a traditionally profitable program like California or Texas shouldn’t be some baffling rejection of Virginia and its new-school success. It simply means the Cavaliers are not promoting novelty. They’re promoting upkeep. And after 5 rings in 5 years, upkeep is a more durable emotion to bottle and promote.

Now that Derivaux, Buckley and Erisman have all introduced their commitments, the Cavaliers have missed out on the highest three home recruits for 3 years in a row. It could also be tempting to see choices like these as warning indicators. But it could be more healthy to see them as proof that the Virginia ladies did their job somewhat too nicely.

However, it doesn’t assist when the remainder of the swimming world is pressuring recruits to ponder the latter. When Virginia wins NCAAs by triple-digit margins, the meet feels pre-emptively determined — there have been years the place the Cavaliers have basically been mathematically out of attain, even earlier than the final evening of swimming had begun. 

For a fan base and coaches attempting to develop ladies’s swimming nationally, that’s an issue. The swimming world needs extra diversification of expertise — followers always touch upon on-line boards about wanting somebody, anybody, to make the workforce race fascinating once more. 

None of that is to say Virginia ladies’s swimming is all of a sudden going to fall off a cliff. The Virginia ladies are nonetheless formidable and could completely win title quantity six, even when the highest of the recruiting market is not a foregone conclusion for them. They nonetheless have absurd expertise on the roster — Claire Curzan, Anna Moesch, Aimee Canny, Sara Curtis, Katie Grimes, Tess Howley, Cavan Gormsen, Leah Hayes, the record goes on — who’re greater than sufficient to maintain them within the championship dialog for no less than the subsequent yr, if not past that. 

Few faculty applications in any sport get the possibility to chase a sixth, seventh or eighth straight nationwide title. But if that dominance means some recruits would moderately attempt to finish the run than prolong it, that’s merely the tax of being the perfect. And for a program that after offered itself on the dream of possibly successful one title sometime, it’s a reasonably luxurious drawback to have.

At some level, the ladies’s run of nationwide titles will finish. That’s simply how dynasties work. What issues is whether or not Virginia is ready for what comes subsequent, but when the final eight years have proven us something, it’s that they know precisely how to try this. The remainder of the nation is simply lastly catching up — generally by becoming a member of the Cavaliers, and generally by daring to try to beat them.