The UBC men's and women's swim teams added 16 new recruits to their rosters. Newcomers Marcus Thormeyer and Emily Overholt are particularly making waves.
“Overholt will be the top recruit of the bunch, ranked one of the best female swimmers in the country,” said swimming head coach Steve Price. The 400 metre individual medley specialist will join the Thunderbirds this fall after representing team Canada at the Rio 2016 Olympics. With the Olympics this year and many of the more senior swimmers graduating and moving on, the women's team looked to fill up their roster.
“We also had some people graduate and move on. We really focussed on trying to restock the team, so to speak, with the best athletes and we feel like we did a pretty good job of that,” said Price.
As for the men's team, the ’Birds are also excited about recruits Marcus Thormeyer, who will join in the fall along with Will Dickson and Warren Meyer. Formerly committed to the University of Southern California, Thormeyer's change of heart was a pleasant turn for the team. “He's the top junior male in the country for sure so that was a great addition,” said Price.
While the men's team lost fewer swimmers this year to the Olympics and graduation, they are looking to fill key position pieces in their roster. Backstroker Dickson and breaststroker Meyer will occupy those positions.
“It makes our men's team full and it'll be really deep and really strong. We'll have a strong men's team for the next few years,” said Price.
But the Thunderbirds are not done recruiting.
“You can never really do it in one year — it always takes a couple years to fill those gaps,” said Price. Perhaps the most important part of recruitment is attracting swimmers to UBC, something that the ’Birds were fortunately successful in doing with Thormeyer.
“It's obviously a pretty competitive field out there to recruit against all the other schools in the United States and Canada. It's pretty systematic of whom we're going after and hopefully we can convince them to come to our school,” said Price.
Price noted that UBC's swimming teams have done very well and accomplished a lot in the past 20 years with both teams taking home silver medals at the 2016 CIS Speedo Swimming Championships back in February. The new UBC Aquatic Centre will also be opening up at the start of the new school year in 2016.
“We're a pretty good draw for a lot of good swimmers out there,” said Price.