TCU has added a fourth swimmer in a dynamite spring recruiting season, and for the first time have gone outside of the state borders to get him. Way outside of the state borders, in fact. TCU coach Richard Sybesma announced on Monday that the Horned Frogs have signed Adam Szilagyi out of Szazhalombattai, Hungary (what a mouthful).
Szilagyi is a veteran of the European Championships, having placed as high as 23rd in 2010 in the 100 back. His long course best is a 55.49 from the 2010 Hungarian Championships, where he was the national runner-up to only the great Laszlo Cseh. He's been as fast as 56.36 in textile. He's shown a lot of great ability in short course too, where he's been as good as 51.83 (which equates to a 46-low in yards). For a time in 2008, he actually held the short course national record that he took from Cseh, though Cseh has since taken it back.
He could very well be on freestyle relays as a freshman as well; he's got long course bests of 23.9/53.5/1:53.1, the latter of which translates to around a 1:37 in yards and the fastest time on the team from last season.
Many of his best times were done in the rubber-suited era, however early returns this year show that he's headed back towards those times once agani.
Szilagyi is older than your average freshman; he turns 21 this year. For a young TCU team though, that should only be a good thing.
The Horned Frogs now have a very good backstroke group on deck, including sophomore-to-be Cooper Robinson. They've brought in a good breaststroker in Ford Story out of Houston, and Harrison Bui who can swim either backstroke or breaststroke (and he did both for the majority of his high school career). This probably pushes Bui more towards the breaststroke races, just based on team needs. They've also brought on Corey Nix, a Texas state-champion sprinter.
This is a class that could be very good. There are a ton of unknowns in the group though, so it's definitely a “wait and see” group, but if everything hits ideally with their training, we could be looking at a top-20 NCAA team in the next 3 years.