When it comes to recruiting athletes for LSU, the Tigers have multiple fertile recruiting grounds nearby.
Louisiana always produces good athletes, and Texas is a neighboring powerhouse. Both Florida and Georgia are also easy to recruit as fellow SEC schools, but LSU has found an exceptionally fertile recruiting ground in an unexpected location.
LSU has three swimmers from England: senior Harry Ackland, junior Lewis Clough and freshman Ellie Baldwin, putting England behind just five states in the amount of swimmers on the Tigers’ roster.
“For recruiting purposes, we recruit all over,” LSU Swimming Coach Dave Geyer said. “It is a big country and swimming is a big sport in that country, so the irony of having three swimmers from that country does not seem that big.”
Ackland committed to LSU for the 2014-15 season. Ackland had success competing for the British national team competing for the United Kingdom in the World School Games and the European Junior Swimming Championships.
At the time, there were no Tigers from England on the roster. Ackland was the only English swimmer on the roster his freshman year.
“I chose to come here, because it had everything that every school offers in terms of swimming, but this school offered a lot more than just the swimming,” Ackland said. “It offered a family orientation. It was just the overall package of swimming and academics.”
The next season, LSU got a commitment from Clough. Clough had also competed for the United Kingdom. He won three silver and two bronze medals for England in the Youth Commonwealth games and won bronze on the 4×100 for the United Kingdom in European Youth Olympic Festival.
When Clough was being recruited to come to LSU, Ackland hosted him. Since then, Clough and Ackland have been roommates and have developed a strong friendship.
“Harry had gone through everything I had gone through,” Clough said. “He helped put things in terms I understood. My first semester didn’t start well and Harry helped explain things to me about academics. I didn’t even know what a GPA was. He took the time to explain everything to me.”
Last year, LSU managed to get a third English swimmer to join the program in Baldwin. Baldwin had spent the last ten years competing for the City of Derby
Swimming Club. Baldwin had previously competed with Ackland in club competition.
“I was always looking to do something exciting and experience new things, so my coach back home recommended American universities,” Baldwin said. I knew that Lewis and Harry were here, and that helped my dad be more comfortable with me coming here. It was always my decision to come here.”
Competing for LSU, and in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, can be quite different from competing in the United Kingdom.
Along with minor issues like a time change and differences in accents and spelling, there are major differences in competition. In NCAA competition, swimming events use yards instead of meters which are used in the United Kingdom.
“The yard is a slightly shorter distance,” Clough said. “So, I have had to adjust my stroke and my breathing to it. That sort of messed me up in my first semester.”
One of the big reasons that LSU has been able to get swimmers to come here is because of the ability to compete in college, which cannot be done to the same extent in the United Kingdom.
Baldwin cited the LSU agricultural college as one of the big reasons she chose to come to LSU.
“I am doing wildlife ecology, because I want to be a primatologist,” Baldwin said. “I love animals, I have always been fascinated by primates and apes. So, from a very young age I have always had this career path. So, LSU and the agricultural college was a perfect choice.”
Geyer credited his assistant Steve Mellor, who has been a coach for LSU since the 2011-12 season and who is also from England, as instrumental in recruiting swimmers to LSU from England and other countries.
Mellor said that it is nice to have English swimmers since they have a common bond and have the same inside jokes.
“There is nothing like this in the U.K.,” Mellor said. “So, it is amazing that we can get four years of this. Obviously we show them the door to this, but they don’t make them walk through. For me, it is great that I can have a few people around that understand what the word football actually means and things like that.”