All-American swimmer Aussie Soph at Arizona enters transfer portal -
M T - 06-08-2021
This is another one of those stories of athletes moving around with the recent decision of the NCAA to open up transfers. In this case, he's a top-level athlete, in a sport where the team aspect of the sport is often less important than individual performances. Whatever school he winds up will get a big boost with his 3 years of eligibility. (Obviously, I'm wondering/hoping if Stanford might be a possibility.)
Arizona Sophomore All-American swimmer David Schlicht has
entered the transfer portal. He has been on the Australian national team. This year he had a 4th (400 IM) and 6th (200 IM) at the NCAAs.
There is
an article about him and his (also elite-level swimmer at USC) sister Jemma regarding their entry into college. He joined Arizona in mid year his freshman year. The article indicates it was challenging to meet the criteria for the US schools, but the article doesn't indicate whether he was an outstanding student or not. David had official visits at Arizona, ASU, Denver, South Carolina[sic]. UA roster indicates "Chose Arizona over ASU, Denver, USC, LSU, Wisconsin, NCU, Grand Canyon, Utah". (I could see that "South Carolina" maybe should have been "Southern California".)
Swimswam wrote "The full time engineering student juggles his studies with 10 pool sessions a week averaging over 6km per session. It’s a tough regime but Schlicht takes it all in his stride, “I don’t find it all too difficult, I just try and stay on top of my work.”" Apparently that is Civil Engineering.
He had
leg surgery during the pandemic but obviously is back to elite level swimming.
I expect he had already knew where he was going before he announced his intent to transfer. Obviously one possibility would be to go to USC (or other L.A. school) to be with his sister. Another would be to go to a school with a coach who might help his swimming career more (such as Bob Bowman at ASU -- he's had some success with IM swimmers ;). I hope Stanford is another possibility.