NCAA Men’s Championships: Jordan Crooks Flashing Serious Speed on Rocky Top

NCAA Men’s Championships: Jordan Crooks Flashing Serious Speed on Rocky Top

When it comes to swimming fast, look no further than Tennessee junior Jordan Crooks. He’s the second-fastest swimmer ever in the 50-yard freestyle, next to Caeleb Dressel, and he has the swimming ability to contend in long course for the Cayman Islands at this summer’s Olympic Games.

For what has transpired in the three years since Tokyo, it’s hard to realize that Jordan Crooks isn’t yet officially an Olympian.

The Crooks in the pysch sheets at the Olympics in 2021 belonged to Jillian Crooks, representing the Cayman Islands on the women’s side. Next fall, Jordan’s younger sister will join him in Knoxville to swim for the University of Tennessee. But Jordan, having turned 19 just before the postponed Tokyo Olympics, was not yet at the top of the male pecking order for universality spots for the island nation. He was left waiting in line behind Brett Fraser’s third Olympic berth, the first having come when Jordan was just 6 years old.

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

The last three years have changed that status. Crooks has achieved Olympic-A cuts in the 50 freestyle and 100 free. He’s won the nation’s first medal of any kind at a World Championships when he secured gold in the 50 free at the 2022 Short Course World Championships in Melbourne. He finaled in both the 50 and 100 free at the World Championships in Fukuoka in 2023 to augment his numerous accolades in short course yards.

Crooks arrived on Rocky Top in the fall of 2021 confident that he could build on a promising youth career toward sustained international relevance in the sprints. His first three years have been a potent confirmation of that aspiration in his ability to consistently hit top times and match success in both the short and long pools.

“It was really new to me, and I learned a lot,” Crooks said last year of his introduction to the NCAA. “I think it was a really cool meet to be a part of, because I was able to see a lot of different techniques that I didn’t really know about or had only heard about, and race some really impressive guys.”

THE OPEN SPRINT FIELD

The 50 free is, in some ways, one of the most egalitarian of the men’s events. While medals the last decade have been dominated by the U.S., France and Brazil, swimmers from countries with less recent success have carved open niches in the landscape. The last six Olympic finals have drawn sprinters from 17 countries, as far afield as Algeria, Poland and Trinidad and Tobago.

In that environment, it’s perhaps not so shocking for a swimmer from the Cayman Islands to break through, as Crooks did with his Short Course Worlds gold. His swim at the former event, which garnered him Swimming World’s Male Newcomer of the Year Award in 2022, was a watershed.

“It feels great,” Crooks said then. “I feel blessed, and I am really grateful for my God, my coaches, my family and everyone who has helped me along this journey. It means a lot to see this come to light. This is awesome.”

Crooks stands out against that sprint field in so many dimensions. His country is one. But so is his youth. The 50 free Olympic final in Tokyo featured no one born after 2000. (Kliment Kolesnikov as the youngster was ninth). The youngest finalist was Michael Andrew at 22 years old, then Caeleb Dressel at 24. As many swimmers were 30 or over as were under 25, and the two oldest—Florent Manaudou and Bruno Fratus—earned medals behind Dressel. Sprinters can age like fine wine, specializing, strengthening and honing the minute details to optimize performance for 20-some feverish, anaerobic seconds.

Crooks is ahead of that curve, both physically in terms of the times and in his mentality. He’ll turn 22 before his Olympic debut in Paris. He’s shown no fear on the international stage. His gold in Melbourne came in a final that featured Ben Proud, Manaudou and Kyle Chalmers, a group practically jangling with medals on the way up to the blocks.

“I looked up to a lot of these guys,” he said in Melbourne. “It was awesome to be able to race them and to have this experience. They are extremely talented, and I have so much respect for every one of them.”

His NCAA title in the 50 free in 2023 might as well have been an Olympic dress rehearsal. He beat Olympians from Canada (Josh Liendo), Sweden (Bjorn Seeliger) and Egypt (Youssef Ramadan), as well as an American relay gold medalist (Brooks Curry) and the standout of the following summer’s World Championships (Jack Alexy). Regardless of how small of a pond he was reared in, Crooks is a big fish deserving of the biggest stages.

NO FLASH IN THE PAN

Crooks’ speed is impressive. But so is his staying power.

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

He showed glimpses at his first NCAAs in 2022, tying for third in the 50 free and finishing fifth in the 100 free. His sophomore season was the breakout campaign. But it increasingly seems not to be an outlier. He won NCAA gold in the 50 free in 2023, even if he didn’t quite get back to the 17.93 he set at SECs. He was tied for fifth in the 100 free and landed fifth in the 100 butterfly.

The 17.93, which joined Dressel as the only members of the sub-18 club, made indelible history. But the fact that he got back to 17.99 at the 2024 SEC Championships shows the enduring speed behind it. Crooks is steadily getting faster, and he’s doing so over such a breadth of time as to seem sustainable.

In the short-course 50 free, for instance, his best time as a freshman was 18.53 seconds. He made the quantum leap to 17.93 the next year and was still fast enough at 18.32 to win the NCAA title. At the 2024 SEC Championships, he blew the field away in 17.99, then went 18.06 to lead off the 200 free relay.

The 100 free is as illustrative. He topped out at 41.16 as a freshman, then was down to 40.92 as a sophomore. It was 40.90 at SECS this year.

Crooks isn’t a one-trick pony. He may be better in the short course pool—his 20.31 from Melbourne is the seventh-fastest SCM performance all-time. But he’s more than a wall specialist, with the swimming ability to contend in long course. He finished sixth in the 50 free in Fukuoka last summer and seventh in the 100 free.

That switch will flip once NCAAs concludes this year and Crooks can turn his focus to long course. Like so much else in his college career, it’s a challenge he’s shown capable of accomplishing before.

“I’ve gained a new appreciation for long course,” he said last summer. “I learned a lot more about how to translate what I know to long course. The stroke is a little bit different, and I’ve worked a lot on my back-end speed. I’ve really enjoyed long course training.”

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mds

1 month ago

Part of what demonstrates he is not just a fast twitch creation is the addition to his competition list of a highly effective 200 free.

For a fellow who was a 50 SCM world champion and 50 SCY NCAA champion, with secondary events (50 LCM free and 100s freestyle (SCY and LCM) and SCY butterfly), all swims of less than 48 seconds, to a 1:31.17, 4th NCAA seed, 200 SCY freestyle is a huge reflection of serious training and ambition. Moving from years of accomplishment in races all explosively anerobic to a 90+ second performance also of high quality is remarkable. Most swimmers start with the longer and come more toward sprints with age. Crooks is expanding the other direction while maintaining his sub-18 status.

Keep it up Jordan.