Though the season isn’t over, Illinois swimming and diving has already taken steps toward building a better team for next fall.
Last Friday, Illinois head coach Sue Novitsky announced the signing of three letters of intent by student-athletes for the 2013-14 season — two swimmers and one diver.
The future Illini are set to include diver Olivia Kassouni (East Grand Rapids, Mich.) and swimmers Amelia Schilling (Shorewood, Minn.) and Gabrielle Stecker (Bettendorf, Iowa).
“We’re just looking for some specific components and our main goal was freestyle, so we pretty much hit it on the head with Amelia and Gabrielle,” Novitsky said.
This year, Schilling was the state champion the 200 and 500 free. She qualified for state all four years in her high school career, and she is the current state record holder in the 500 free with a time of 4 minutes, 48.96 seconds. She qualified for both the USA Swimming Junior Nationals and the USA Swimming Winter Nationals.
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“Amelia’s uncle is our former assistant basketball coach, so he sort of gave us her name,” Novitsky said. “We’ve been watching her for a couple of years now.”
As for Stecker, she holds two high school state records in the 200 and 500 free with times of 1:49.64 and 4:52.91, respectively. She is a three-time state qualifier and, like Schilling, a USA Swimming Junior National qualifier.
“Gabrielle, we saw this summer when we were recruiting. We checked in, said ‘hi’ and saw how things were going,” Novitsky said. “(That’s) half of what recruiting is, maintaining those relationships with those coaches and, as their kids develop, we see who might fit in with our school.”
Kassouni made a name for herself in the realm of diving, having held the Division III state title for 2010 and 2011. She was also the Division II state runner-up this year. In 2011 and 2012, Kassouni was a national finalist in her age group for the 1-meter, 3-meter and platform competitions.
Novitsky said she does not think the team needs to bring in a lot of members as much as it just needs to find strong swimmers to fill in positions where the Illini are weaker.
J.J. can be reached at jjwilso2@ dailyillini.com and @TheWilson9287.
