The College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) is working on a proposal for a new recruiting cycle.
The new cycle is expected to see the start date for college recruiting shifted later, likely until after a student-athlete’s junior year of high school.
The CSCAA confirmed to SwimSwam that there is currently an effort to modernize recruiting and the start date, recruiting calendar and transfer portal are all being looked at.
Currently, recruiting officially begins on June 15 after an athlete’s sophomore year, so in many cases, swimmers and divers make their verbal commitment to a university before they’ve even started their junior year of high school.
Recruiting has seemingly shifted earlier and earlier over the past number of years, and the common complaint is that the athletes are making commitments to schools well before they really know what they want out of their post-secondary career.
As a result, we’ve commonly swimmers and divers flip their college commitments—verballing somewhere only to change their mind a year or so later.
Just over four months into the current cycle, we’ve already seen 12 of our top 20 girls in the high school class of 2028 announce their college commitments, while on the boys’ side, 15 of the top 20 have made their verbal pledges.
Although details are currently thin on what exactly the new proposal includes, it is expected to be voted on by the NCAA Swimming & Diving Oversight Committee “later this year.” The CSCAA told SwimSwam no elements of the proposal will be voted on before December.
In 2019, the NCAA adopted new rules that it said were designed to combat early recruiting, though it seemingly had the opposite effect in swimming and diving.
The start date for recruiting was moved from July 1 after an athlete’s junior year to June 15 after their sophomore year. The 2019 rule change also restricted communication between schools and prospective student-athletes before that date. Previously, recruits could call coaches and coaches could accept those calls, but coaches could not initiate contact themselves.
In 2023, the NCAA adopted a new recruiting calendar for swimming & diving proposed by the CSCAA, which included six weeks of recruiting shutdown periods. In 2026-27, the shutdown periods are Aug. 17-23, Nov. 9-12, Dec. 18 – Jan. 7, and Feb. 7-20.
