Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps, Lenny Krayzelburg, and Ian Crocker appeared Sept. 10 as part of the Disney "Swim With the Stars" event at the University of Maryland.
"Swimming has gotten more attention than it has ever gotten before," Krayzelburg said. He said this event will "revolutionize the sport."
But months after the Olympics, has the attention lasted? And more importantly for AU, has the Olympics energy translated into the popularity of the sport overall? AU students need not have traveled to Athens to see competitive swimming - it goes on right in Reeves Pool in Bender Arena. Yet even now when swimming has relatively high popularity, AU swimmers go on competing in relative anonymity.
Women's Swim Captain Cameron Miller thinks that could change, to an extent, with the right promotion. Miller said she thinks the Swim With the Stars event "will impact kids nationwide," adding that her friend who doesn't swim attended the event. "I would love to see AU do something along the same lines."
Men's Swim Captain Valery Fomenko said he thinks that Michael Phelps could use his fame to garner interest for the sport.
"If Michael Phelps is coming to speak and talk about the way he is working and swimming, that would be great. Everyone knows him. If he comes somewhere, people might be interested to discover another part of swimming," Fomenko said. "People think that swimming is just lanes and that it is boring. They don't see what goes into it: The team, the cheers."
However, some say before basic promotion, AU needs to become more conscious of its athletic programs.
"We are a different kind of campus in a different kind of city," said Davin, citing the political speakers that pack students into Bender Arena. "They are not getting that kind of stuff at Wisconsin. So there is a completely different focus here because of where we are and the academic level of the people at the university. And do I wish they embraced athletics more? I'm certain every coach here would like the venue packed."
Fomenko agrees that AU is "not a sports university."
"People are mainly here for academics, partying. It's not only swimming. All the sports don't really have public recognition," he said. "Sometimes I understand it. At the pool, you cannot go on the deck during the meets and you have to stay outside the windows. It is kind of boring - you cannot see, you cannot hear, you can't cheer the people on. It's a good university to practice for but it's not good for an audience."
Olympian Ian Crocker, a student at the University of Texas, believes that Olympics does not promote collegiate-level swimming, but the colleges support the Olympians.
"I think one of the reasons that the men's Olympic team had success is the base that we get in the NCAA-level swimming. We go off to college to learn how to be a teammate, learn how to put school pride in front of us and go out and do the best job we can," he said. "Everybody helps us in order so that when we get up to represent our country, it's the same lessons-college really helped the national Olympic-level swimming team."
People that are interested in Olympic swimming should be interested in collegiate swimming, some argue, because colleges are the training grounds for the great swimmers. In August 2004, AU swimmer Ethan Bassett finished No. 7 in the 200 Breaststroke in the Olympic Trials.
Like Crocker, Bassett made AU his base.
"In the 200 breaststroke [Bassett] walked out on TV with his big red AU T-shirt on," Davin said. "All the work that we did with Ethan, all the work that the coaches did with him the four years he was here, all the different stuff he learned here as a collegiate athlete, in the pool and the stuff he learned in the classroom, the professors that helped him become more focused, more aware, more able to do whatever in the pool, that really helped him."
Miller sees collegiate swimming as a conduit to Olympic swimming.
"Every competitive swimmer grows up either dreaming to qualify for Olympic Trials or to compete at the collegiate level. Most Olympians have or will, at some point, compete in the collegiate field."
Given the importance that college plays in the forming of great Olympic swimmers, it stands to reason that people who are excited about the U.S. Team should be just as excited about the AU team. But the fact is that swimming is not a spectator sport and AU is not a sports university. For instance, in Spring 2004 AU announced that new swimmers will not get scholarships. However, Davin notes that the faculty has been extremely supportive, especially when Bassett was at the height of his training and schooling.
Davin said he takes some responsibility for the lack of consciousness.
"I wish that I had done more over the past to bring more people in to watch, to see the great swimmers and the tremendous things they have done," he said. "Perhaps I have not been as strong of an advocate as I have needed to be about what we have to offer and the show that we put on."
However, last year's Phil Reeves event was successful in getting students to come out to the pool, he said.
Fomenko said he wishes people were more interested.
"We don't have enough promotion. I don't know why people are so bored of swimming," he said. "There is a huge lack of recognition. It's going to take time. People aren't going to speak about swimming like they talk about football. I think the main reason why people are going to be more interested in it is because of the talent of swimmers like Michael Phelps or, in France, Manaudou. People who are talented, who win, but also who promote it and speak about it."
Davin believes that the Olympics will have a positive impact on the sport.
"Even if [people] don't want to be serious athletes themselves, maybe they will go out to the pool here and more people will come out and enjoy swimming as a recreational activity and certainly you can do it all your life," he said.
Fomenko says he has the answer to changing AU's view on swimming: "Build a swimming pool in the middle of the quad"
