Justin Finkel, in the middle
And an appreciation of David Fitch, just because.
In case you forgot already, here are your last five CSCAA Men’s Swimmer of the Year award winners:
2024: Justin Finkel, Connecticut
2023: Tanner Filion, Whitman
2022: Bryan Fitzgerald, Kenyon
2019: David Fitch, Kenyon
2018: Oliver Smith, Emory
For reasons entirely outside his control, the vote that awarded Justin Finkel this high honor was somewhat controversial. Derek Maas' performance at the Division III Nationals was surrounded by unusual circumstances—from his outstanding achievements to the discomfort some felt about his presence. We can only report on our own experience. When Justin Finkel was named Swimmer of the Year, we received an unusual number of texts, ranging from accusations of pettiness and bias against Derek Maas to staunch assertions that Justin Finkel truly deserved the award, sometimes both sentiments expressed by the same person.
Our goal is not to untangle the complexities surrounding COVID's lost seasons, nor cast blame towards institutions poised to reap the greatest rewards (because they have grad schools) or athletes who were playing by the new rules.1
We are just curious where Justin Finkel fits in the group of CSCAA Men’s Swimmer of the Year award winners. If we backstop our inquiry with Andrew Wilson’s 2017 season, the consensus best season ever by a Division III swimmer, we can place Justin Finkel among four other legendary Division III athletes and ask: how does he stack up?
Actually, really well.
For a technical note on how we measured the swims, follow the footnote.2
Justin Finkel’s performance at the 2024 Nationals compares quite favorably with other recent Men’s Swimmer of the Year award winners. Here is what we mean.
Tanner Filion, SRS Total: 18.87
OK. No one looks good compared to Tanner Filion. In his last season in Division III, Tanner Filion set new records in 100 Back and 200 Back and somehow medaled in the most competitive event in Men’s Division III, the 100 Fly.3
Mr. Filion took his final year of eligibility and went to Notre Dame, where he set the Notre Dame record in 100 Back (44.99). He is currently in Indianapolis competing in the 100 Back, 200 Back, and 100 Fly at Division I nationals. So, let’s just go ahead and put Tanner Filion in the top spot and move on.
Oliver Smith, SRS Total: 14.86
As one of the all-time greats, Oliver Smith continues to hold the Men’s records in the 50 and 100 Free. His 100 Free time of 42.98 shattered the 43.00 barrier, marking the first such occurrence in Division III history.
He was also part of two relay teams that set 200 and 400 Medley relay records in 2017. The 200 Medley Relay record was finally broken last year by a team from Emory, while a Kenyon team broke the 400 Medley Relay record at this year’s Nationals.4
Here’s a little more on Oliver Smith if you are interested.
Justin Finkel, SRS Total: 14.57
His accomplishments recently discussed, we’ll keep this short, and simply remind everyone that the 200 Fly time is a new Division III record. Also, look at the SRS on that swim. It is basically tied for second with Oliver Smith’s now six-year old 50 Free record in terms of single-swim maximum SRS score. Justin Finkel’s 200 Fly record time is one of the greatest swims ever by a Division III Men’s Swimmer of the Year award winner.
Bryan Fitzgerald, SRS Total: 14.54
A hyper-versatile athlete who won both the 400 IM and 500 Free at 2022 Nationals, Bryan Fitzgerald was enormously valuable for Kenyon throughout his tenure.5 This was never more evident than in 2022, a year marked by one of the Kenyon Lords' roughest NCAA performances in history.
Kenyon DQ’d both their Medley Relays, and the 200 and 400 Free Relays failed to reach the Championship Final. Mr. Fitzgerald swam on only one relay - the 800 Free - and that was the sole Kenyon relay to finish in the top eight. His opening leg, which he won, was essentially a 200 Free showdown against Pat Pema, Tobe Obochi, Kyle Wu, David Pearcy, Mason Kelber, and Tag Curwen—each an elite freestyler. Yet, Bryan Fitzgerald prevailed.
Despite it being a down year for Kenyon, Mr. Fitzgerald's outstanding performances made him an obvious choice for CSCAA Swimmer of the Year.
David Fitch, SRS Total: 13.20
Capping David Fitch's swims at six, perhaps more so than for the others, significantly underestimates his contribution. By counting every swim that achieved a 1.00+ SRS rating at the 2019 Nationals, David Fitch would add three more swims to his record, giving him an SRS total second only to Tanner Filion.
David Fitch didn’t deliver his best performance at these Nationals, nor at any previous Nationals. He set the division record for the Men’s 100 Butterfly, clocking in at 46.46, during Kenyon’s mid-year invitational in November 2021. This record stood firm until last week—congratulations to Jesse Ssengonzi.
From his numbers, it’s clear that David Fitch was brilliant, underscoring his worthiness for this award.6 Yet, merely looking at the numbers doesn’t capture the full David Fitch experience.
He introduced a level of showmanship to his swims that remains unmatched in Division III. His flip turns in the 100 Fly, accompanied by epic underwaters, meant that for much of the race, you barely saw him. His lane showed still water, then an explosion at the surface for a few strokes, followed by a flip turn as he vanished again beneath the surface for two-thirds of the return lap.
Good video of Mr. Fitch swimming, though you might want to turn off the sound.
What you didn't see of him in the water, he more than compensated for on the blocks. He'd walk out onto the deck clad in an overstuffed black modal hoodie adorned with silver metallic embroidery, reminiscent of Jesse Pinkman—though Mr. Fitch's attire was always brand new and impeccably clean. Atop the blocks, he posed as if for a Conan movie poster, delivering a sharp, entirely sincere salute to his head coach at poolside. It might have seemed ridiculous if it weren't so thoroughly enjoyable. And if Mr. Fitch weren’t moments away from demolishing everyone else in the pool.7
Like others privileged to interact with Mr. Fitch, we discovered an unusually sincere individual who cared deeply for his fellow swimmers. Following his final Nationals, in a heartfelt farewell to his team, he shared that his aim in swimming at Kenyon extended beyond winning races; his true goal was to become a better man. This year, for the second year in a row, in team speeches after nationals, at least one Senior spoke about being an underclassman profoundly influenced by David Fitch’s words.
Yet, what we will remember most about David Fitch is how, when it came time to race, he swam like he knew people were watching. We miss David Fitch.
As one Division III swim coach - from a prestigious liberal arts college - said to us during nationals: “It’s been fascinating to work through because none of the student athletes are doing anything wrong...I don’t blame anyone for taking advantage of it and at the same time I am incredibly happy that next year is the last year of this.”
Our SRS metric is useful for a range of comparisons. The SRS metric offers a comprehensive means of comparison by evaluating swim times against hundreds of top performances in Division III over the last five full seasons. It assigns a score based on how a swim's time measures up to the average and standard deviation of these elite performances, providing a uniform standard across events, years, meets, and genders.
To ensure fairness in comparison, we've set a rule to limit scoring to six events per athlete. This addresses the potential advantage for swimmers like David Fitch, who, because he only swam strokes that allowed for relay start times, could otherwise accumulate additional SRS scores over someone like Tanner Filion, who might not have relay starts to boost his SRS tally.
We can go back and forth on this. On one hand, including relay start times acknowledges contributions to team efforts. On the other, it risks unfairly disadvantaging athletes without relay opportunities or those swimming strokes/legs without relay starts.
We've opted for a six-score limit but acknowledge the complexities this decision entails. Further discussion will explore the implications of this approach.
Mr. Filion finished third behind current 100 Fly record holder Jesse Ssengonzi and last year’s national champion in the 100 Fly, Marko Krtinic of Kenyon.
2017
200 Medley Relay: Sage Ono, Andrew Wilson, Cooper Tollen and Oliver Smith
400 Medley Relay: Sage Ono, Andrew Wilson, Christian Baker and Oliver Smith
2023
200 Medley Relay: Ryan Soh, Jake Meyer, Jeff Echols and Colin Lafave
2024
400 Medley Relay: Yurii Kosian, Alecsa Dobric, Marko Krtinic and Djordje Dragojlovic
He also finished 8th in the mile.
About that. The question is not whether he was worthy of the award. It is true that in a different post we raised questions about whether the award might have just as reasonably gone to Tom Gordon in 2019. We thought it a close call, and we consider Mr. Gordon one of the two best swimmers in Division III history to never win the CSCAA Swimmer of the Year award.
We are aware that the gif uses the images from the 100 Fly at 2022 Nationals that Mr. Fitch lost to Mr. Ssengonzi. It’s not the best example of a dominating David Fitch performance. But is a good example of the almost WWE-like build-up to one of his events.
Great article, as usual! Congratulations to Justin Finkel! His closing speed at this meet is reminiscent of Bobby Finke’s extra gear in the Olympics.
Another example of great closing speed at this meet was Connor Vincent, throwing down a blistering 24 second final 50, for a very exciting finish to the mile race. Keep an eye on Mr Vincent as a contender for next year’s Swimmer of the Year.
This article mentions the controversy regarding Derek Maas, and Swim Swam also wrote an article on this.
Yet another outstanding swimmer who had an amazing meet, that hasn’t received much attention, was Kenyon’s Djordje Dragojlovic. Mr Dragojlovic earned 2 individual NCAA titles, an individual NCAA runner up, and was a key contributor to 3 relay NCAA titles, plus another podium finish in a fourth relay.
This site has referenced, in the past, the benefits of making votes for team rankings public. It might be interesting to make votes for Swimmer of the Year public as well.
In all honesty, I’m not sure how much of the meet most of the coaches actually see. I notice coaches I know leaving finals after the first event or not come to finals at all if they don’t have a swimmer. I’ve seen plenty of Most Valuable awards at championship meets go to an unexpected recipient. I talk to 20-30 college coaches most years about my swimmers when they are being recruited and I wonder how much some of them really know about the sport. I believe in some ways, these awards are like Prom King and Queen where it becomes more of a popularity contest with a hint of merit. Can we make a case that Justin was Swimmer of the Meet? Yes. But was he the obvious choice? No since there was a swimmer with 3 individual wins. Was Finkel possibly a politically motivated choice or coaches being petty? Definitely. It isn’t like Maas cheated. He played by the rules as they stand. He’s going to a top level med school and had a year of eligibility. Now, does this show the disparity among D3 schools? I think so. There certainly are a lot broader range of school sizes, resources, grad programs etc than in D1. I even heard from one of the coaches that his school offers swimmers a “pipeline” into their med school. How much of a draw would THAT be? I like the way Justin swims but I also appreciate the high level of swimming Derek was at (and I watched all 8 sessions).