GRAHAM: The Science of Swimming, Revisited
2/8/2018 12:04:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Women's Swimming and Diving
By Andy Graham, IUHoosiers.com
James Counsilman was studying for the doctorate that would bequeath his nickname when a clue arose to the swimming revolution he was to pioneer.
Photographs "Doc" made of Iowa's 1948 Olympic freestyle champ Walter Ris revealed Ris pulled with a bent-elbow elliptical stroke rather than the straight-arm technique in vogue at the time.
And Counsilman further noted that when Ris was coached to straighten the arm, Ris slowed down.
Contemplating that led to an epiphany. Cousilman applied Bernoulli's Principle, named for an 18th-century Swiss mathematician, pertaining to the increase in speed of a fluid with a decrease in pressure.
It was among the foundational aspects of Cousilman's 1968 book that revamped an entire sport: "The Science of Swimming."
(And by 1971, the numbers showed that Counsilman's Indiana University swimmers and Hobie Billingsley's IU divers would have won a dual meet against the rest of the world. Counsilman was that far out in front of his coaching peers.)
Almost a half-century later, Indiana swimming still overtly values scientific and mathematical approaches, as befits the college program Counsilman made world famous during a tenure that ran from 1957 to 1990.
There is a reason why former Penn and Georgia Tech coach Chris DeSantis headlined his 2017 article on the current IU coach: "Mad Scientist Ray Looze Shoots for the Moon."
It praised not just Looze – the first person to ever earn Big Ten Coach of the Year honors in the same season for both men's and women's swimming, doing that consecutively in both 2016 and 2017 – but also the staff he has attracted in Bloomington.
That now includes current volunteer assistant Reed Fujan, a brainy Minnesotan out of Notre Dame, upon whom Looze has bestowed a new title: Director of Swimming Research.
That arose organically out of recruiting discussion at a recent staff meeting.
"I was at a staff meeting and I said, 'When I see this club team, it's a red flag, because its swimmers have struggled in college,' " Looze recalled last week. "People there said 'Aw, that's not true.'
"Reed Fujan took in that conversation and then analyzed that club for me, without even being asked."
Fujan picks up the tale.
"I heard that and thought, 'Why don't we apply analytics to see whether or not that's right?' " Fujan said. "I wasn't trying to prove Ray wrong or right, necessarily, but rather just seeing if we applied analytics that we could get good data.
"I thought it might be for the better of the program to see if club teams produced swimmers who got faster in college. Or not."
So Fujan took a look at the club's top dozen or so swimmers during recent years, made use of USA Swimming's data base, compiled spreadsheets and documented their progressions at the college level.
And it turned out Looze was right.
"I think that was valuable for Ray and for our staff," Fujan said. "It justified Ray's judgement, for one thing, but it's always better if you have something tangible and quantifiable.
"People are always cultivating relationships in recruiting, and opinions can become subjective. You don't necessarily want to believe that this club, which has people you like running it, doesn't necessarily produce swimmers who get faster in college. It's easier to accept if you have data."
Empirical evidence, in other words, trumps subjectivity and anecdotal observation.
"In a lot of other sports – baseball, football, basketball – you're seeing sabermetrics – the 'Moneyball' stuff – and other analytics, applied," Fujan said. "I think swimming is kind of behind, in that sense. We're not fully using the technology at our disposal. And we're not using the skill-sets a lot of us have nowadays."
That sort of sentiment is music to Looze's ears.
Looze grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and acquired an abiding respect for the sabermetrics statistical approach Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane applied to baseball analytics made famous by the "Moneyball" book and film.
And Looze is intent on staying cutting-edge.
So he hobnobs with such local statistics gurus as Wayne Winston (also a Master Swimmer) and Jeff Sagarin. And he ponders kinesiology's applicable lessons. Looze notes that IU remains the proud home of the Counsilman Center for the Sciences of Swimming directed by Joel Stager.
And Looze does things such as empower young minds such as Fujan's.
"So Reed was just doing this stuff on his own," Looze said. "And I said, 'You know, Reed, we're going to create a title for you that's reflective of what you're bringing to the table for us.' "
Beyond building some basic stuff, such as color-coded depth charts to help identify future recruiting needs and data to help maximize lineups for certain meets (such as the upcoming Big Ten championships, with the women starting Feb. 14 in Columbus, Ohio, and the men Feb. 21 in Minneapolis), Fujan has built an algorithm for more sophisticated stuff.
"We call it 'The Men's and Women's Recruiting Tool,' " Fujan said. "It's essentially an algorithm. I was helping (IU assistant) coach Mark Hill with recruiting then, and he asked me to come up with a ranking list for the prospects.
"There were a lot of kids and I was saying to myself, 'How do I rank a kid who does the breaststroke events as opposed to the butterfly or the IM?' We put together a program to create a ranking system for us. It includes our top needs. We're integrated a lot of formulas. Error formulas. Index matches. H lookups. V lookups. Ranking tables. There is a lot of corresponding stuff with various spreadsheets. And it kicks out recruiting recommendations."
Fast times. A swimmer's height. Wingspan. Academics. Club team and high school team history in terms of development and future progression. Less tangible input such as "competitiveness." All fed into the algorithm.
"At Indiana, we don't necessarily get all the best recruits in the country, but we're trying to win the national title and put people on Olympic teams," Looze said. "So how can we still meet those goals when we don't have the people who are the fastest coming in?
"We want to find a smarter way to do it. The Midwest is full of swimmers who were maybe high school only, or didn't have the facilities, or had a classroom teacher stepping into a coaching position. You can add all that sort of information to your formula, and Reed is a smart guy."
Olympic multi-gold medalist Lilly King hails from Evansville and she's gone faster as IU coaches have reduced her strokes per lap. Even the best can improve, can become more efficient. Can get faster.
It's working, specifically and broadly. Indiana's men are ranked No. 2 nationally and the women are at No. 8.
King and fellow 2016 Rio goal-medalist Blake Pieroni, who prepped at Chesterton, are still on the Hoosier roster. Erstwhile teammate Cody Miller also won gold at Rio. Four other IU swimmers also represented other countries as Olympians.
Looze, on the 2016 Team USA Rio coaching staff, obviously wants more of such stuff. And he wants to win more Big Ten titles (the men are the defending champs, having won the program's 25th league championship last year, and the women were second for the sixth straight season). And he wants to win NCAA titles (with the last coming in 1973, Counsilman's sixth straight).
And Looze is bringing science and math to bear.
"There really is no limit to it," Looze said. "It comes down to what you can think of, as a coach, in terms of possible applications. Reed is a great young coach. I probably won't have him here too long, but he will have left his mark."
The approach pursued by Looze and Fujan is keeping with a general philosophy espoused by IU athletic director Fred Glass.
And by Doc Counsilman.
"Look at Fred Glass and what we're doing with the Excellence Academy, and with the Mark Cuban Center, all this cutting-edge stuff," Looze said. "Football just added strength and conditioning staff that is sports-science oriented. Fred loves this stuff. It's a perfect fit to what we've been about.
"There is a relationship to Doc Counsilman to some of the stuff we're doing. None of us claim to be Doc. There is only one Doc. But we're trying. This is kind of an offshoot to that, where it's, 'You know, it would make sense that Indiana is doing stuff like that.
"Because that's what Indiana does.' "
James Counsilman was studying for the doctorate that would bequeath his nickname when a clue arose to the swimming revolution he was to pioneer.
Photographs "Doc" made of Iowa's 1948 Olympic freestyle champ Walter Ris revealed Ris pulled with a bent-elbow elliptical stroke rather than the straight-arm technique in vogue at the time.
And Counsilman further noted that when Ris was coached to straighten the arm, Ris slowed down.
Contemplating that led to an epiphany. Cousilman applied Bernoulli's Principle, named for an 18th-century Swiss mathematician, pertaining to the increase in speed of a fluid with a decrease in pressure.
It was among the foundational aspects of Cousilman's 1968 book that revamped an entire sport: "The Science of Swimming."
(And by 1971, the numbers showed that Counsilman's Indiana University swimmers and Hobie Billingsley's IU divers would have won a dual meet against the rest of the world. Counsilman was that far out in front of his coaching peers.)
Almost a half-century later, Indiana swimming still overtly values scientific and mathematical approaches, as befits the college program Counsilman made world famous during a tenure that ran from 1957 to 1990.
There is a reason why former Penn and Georgia Tech coach Chris DeSantis headlined his 2017 article on the current IU coach: "Mad Scientist Ray Looze Shoots for the Moon."
It praised not just Looze – the first person to ever earn Big Ten Coach of the Year honors in the same season for both men's and women's swimming, doing that consecutively in both 2016 and 2017 – but also the staff he has attracted in Bloomington.
That now includes current volunteer assistant Reed Fujan, a brainy Minnesotan out of Notre Dame, upon whom Looze has bestowed a new title: Director of Swimming Research.
That arose organically out of recruiting discussion at a recent staff meeting.
"I was at a staff meeting and I said, 'When I see this club team, it's a red flag, because its swimmers have struggled in college,' " Looze recalled last week. "People there said 'Aw, that's not true.'
"Reed Fujan took in that conversation and then analyzed that club for me, without even being asked."
Fujan picks up the tale.
"I heard that and thought, 'Why don't we apply analytics to see whether or not that's right?' " Fujan said. "I wasn't trying to prove Ray wrong or right, necessarily, but rather just seeing if we applied analytics that we could get good data.
"I thought it might be for the better of the program to see if club teams produced swimmers who got faster in college. Or not."
So Fujan took a look at the club's top dozen or so swimmers during recent years, made use of USA Swimming's data base, compiled spreadsheets and documented their progressions at the college level.
And it turned out Looze was right.
"I think that was valuable for Ray and for our staff," Fujan said. "It justified Ray's judgement, for one thing, but it's always better if you have something tangible and quantifiable.
"People are always cultivating relationships in recruiting, and opinions can become subjective. You don't necessarily want to believe that this club, which has people you like running it, doesn't necessarily produce swimmers who get faster in college. It's easier to accept if you have data."
Empirical evidence, in other words, trumps subjectivity and anecdotal observation.
"In a lot of other sports – baseball, football, basketball – you're seeing sabermetrics – the 'Moneyball' stuff – and other analytics, applied," Fujan said. "I think swimming is kind of behind, in that sense. We're not fully using the technology at our disposal. And we're not using the skill-sets a lot of us have nowadays."
That sort of sentiment is music to Looze's ears.
Looze grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and acquired an abiding respect for the sabermetrics statistical approach Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane applied to baseball analytics made famous by the "Moneyball" book and film.
And Looze is intent on staying cutting-edge.
So he hobnobs with such local statistics gurus as Wayne Winston (also a Master Swimmer) and Jeff Sagarin. And he ponders kinesiology's applicable lessons. Looze notes that IU remains the proud home of the Counsilman Center for the Sciences of Swimming directed by Joel Stager.
And Looze does things such as empower young minds such as Fujan's.
"So Reed was just doing this stuff on his own," Looze said. "And I said, 'You know, Reed, we're going to create a title for you that's reflective of what you're bringing to the table for us.' "
Beyond building some basic stuff, such as color-coded depth charts to help identify future recruiting needs and data to help maximize lineups for certain meets (such as the upcoming Big Ten championships, with the women starting Feb. 14 in Columbus, Ohio, and the men Feb. 21 in Minneapolis), Fujan has built an algorithm for more sophisticated stuff.
"We call it 'The Men's and Women's Recruiting Tool,' " Fujan said. "It's essentially an algorithm. I was helping (IU assistant) coach Mark Hill with recruiting then, and he asked me to come up with a ranking list for the prospects.
"There were a lot of kids and I was saying to myself, 'How do I rank a kid who does the breaststroke events as opposed to the butterfly or the IM?' We put together a program to create a ranking system for us. It includes our top needs. We're integrated a lot of formulas. Error formulas. Index matches. H lookups. V lookups. Ranking tables. There is a lot of corresponding stuff with various spreadsheets. And it kicks out recruiting recommendations."
Fast times. A swimmer's height. Wingspan. Academics. Club team and high school team history in terms of development and future progression. Less tangible input such as "competitiveness." All fed into the algorithm.
"At Indiana, we don't necessarily get all the best recruits in the country, but we're trying to win the national title and put people on Olympic teams," Looze said. "So how can we still meet those goals when we don't have the people who are the fastest coming in?
"We want to find a smarter way to do it. The Midwest is full of swimmers who were maybe high school only, or didn't have the facilities, or had a classroom teacher stepping into a coaching position. You can add all that sort of information to your formula, and Reed is a smart guy."
Olympic multi-gold medalist Lilly King hails from Evansville and she's gone faster as IU coaches have reduced her strokes per lap. Even the best can improve, can become more efficient. Can get faster.
It's working, specifically and broadly. Indiana's men are ranked No. 2 nationally and the women are at No. 8.
King and fellow 2016 Rio goal-medalist Blake Pieroni, who prepped at Chesterton, are still on the Hoosier roster. Erstwhile teammate Cody Miller also won gold at Rio. Four other IU swimmers also represented other countries as Olympians.
Looze, on the 2016 Team USA Rio coaching staff, obviously wants more of such stuff. And he wants to win more Big Ten titles (the men are the defending champs, having won the program's 25th league championship last year, and the women were second for the sixth straight season). And he wants to win NCAA titles (with the last coming in 1973, Counsilman's sixth straight).
And Looze is bringing science and math to bear.
"There really is no limit to it," Looze said. "It comes down to what you can think of, as a coach, in terms of possible applications. Reed is a great young coach. I probably won't have him here too long, but he will have left his mark."
The approach pursued by Looze and Fujan is keeping with a general philosophy espoused by IU athletic director Fred Glass.
And by Doc Counsilman.
"Look at Fred Glass and what we're doing with the Excellence Academy, and with the Mark Cuban Center, all this cutting-edge stuff," Looze said. "Football just added strength and conditioning staff that is sports-science oriented. Fred loves this stuff. It's a perfect fit to what we've been about.
"There is a relationship to Doc Counsilman to some of the stuff we're doing. None of us claim to be Doc. There is only one Doc. But we're trying. This is kind of an offshoot to that, where it's, 'You know, it would make sense that Indiana is doing stuff like that.
"Because that's what Indiana does.' "
Players Mentioned
Breast/IM
/ Women's Swimming and Diving
Freestyle
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