If tradition is to continue, freshman Amy McCullough will win the 500-yard freestyle at the Big Ten Championships next year for the Michigan women”s swimming and diving team.
It only makes sense, seeing as how she and Wisconsin freshman Carly Piper have rotated winning the 500-yard freestyle since the 1997 Michigan Class A finals, when they were high school freshmen.
Piper, formerly of Grosse Point North High School, won the 500-yard freestyle last week at Big Tens, beating the ninth-place McCullough, who attended Farmington Hills Mercy High School.
While there currently appears to be a large separation between the two seven seconds to be exact the past shows that McCullough does have the odds in her favor next year.
In McCullough”s freshman year at Mercy she finished seventh in the event, 10 seconds behind the first-place Piper. By their sophomore years the two switched positions, with Piper this time looking up at the state champion McCullough. The 1999 state finals brought another role-reversal, when Piper beat McCullough by nine seconds. But McCullough got the final say to end their high school careers, winning the 500-yard freestyle by five seconds last year.
So it was only fitting that their new collegiate-rivalry started in the state of Michigan, last week in Ann Arbor.
“I was nervous, but I was more excited because I was coming home to people I knew,” Piper said.
She went on to win three other events en route to becoming the Big Ten Championship Swimmer of the Meet and the conference”s Freshman of the Year.
With her success arises an interesting scenario.
If Piper was combined with Michigan”s current distance swimmers McCullough, a NCAA qualifier in the 1,650-yard freestyle, and Emily-Clare Fenn, an All-American in the event last year the Wolverines would have one of the best distance trios in the nation.
Unfortunately Piper will never be seen in the maize and blue.
Piper “was sent materials from us, but my understanding was that she was really interested in leaving the state,” Michigan coach Jim Richardson said.
Michigan wasn”t able to land Piper, but it were able to get McCullough, whose success in high school carried over into her first season with the Wolverines.
“I”m not going to take anything away from Wisconsin, they recruited (Piper) really, really hard,” Richardson said. “And we recruited McCullough at the same time because Amy showed a strong interest in us. We know we got a really good one in Amy, and (Wisconsin) knows they got a really good one in Carly.”
In the future, Piper hopes to secure a sub-16:11 time in the 1,650-yard freestyle (her current best is 16:16.25). McCullough, on the other hand, will endure Richardson”s grueling training regimen, which may take away some speed this season, but should add to her strength for the rest of her career.
As for the rest of this year, Piper and McCullough will add a new dimension to their rivalry when they face off at NCAAs in the 1,650-yard freestyle an event not common in high school for the second time ever in team play.
Piper won the first meeting by about 10 seconds.
Ten seconds the same difference as Piper”s 1997 win.
A new tradition builds off the old.
And McCullough”s odds of beating Piper at NCAAs just went up.