IU Swimming Best Is Still Ahead

Ray Looze has a NCAA swimming title in his Indiana coaching sights.

It could come with the men, who have won six national championships, but none since 1973. They do have two straight top-three finishes.

It could be for the Hoosier women, who have never won a national title, but whose consistent excellence — five straight top-10 national finishes — makes that an annual possibility.

One this is clear — with 10 Big Ten coach-of-the-year awards and nine conference championships on his 18-year Hoosier resume, Looze is not going anywhere, not to USC, his alma mater searching for a new coach, or any place.

“I’m excited about where we’re going as a program,” Looze says. “It’s one of the best programs in the country, and we’ve got unfinished business here. I think the institution and the kids and coaches would really like to bring that national title back.”

A lot of Looze’s excitement centers on Bruno Blaskovic, the Big Ten Swimmer of the Championships for 2020. In March, he won the conference 50-meter freestyle, was the runner-up in the Big Ten 100 butterfly, and also was part of the Hoosiers’ winning 200 and 400 medley relay teams, as well as the winning 200 and 400 freestyle relay squads.

The junior from Croatia was seeded third in last month’s NCAA tourney meet for the 50 and 100 freestyles, and 10th in the 100 butterfly before the event was cancelled because of Covid-19.

“He’s learning how to win a lot — in practice, in the classroom, in races,” Looze says. “You saw in his Big Ten performance he still had a full beard at the time.”

Figure that beard will be shaved off by the time competition returns.

“I think Bruno was going to be one of the best swimmers in the NCAA this year,” Looze says. “It’s a shame we couldn’t share that with the rest of the world. He’ll have a shot at the A final at the World Championships.

“Maybe this extra year is not a bad thing. It gives them another year to close the gap on the more established people.”

Former IU swimmers Lily King and Cody Miller, both Olympic medalists with more international victories in their plans, are swimming at an undisclosed private pool that Miller jokingly described via social media as, “Batman’s Lair.”

Their quest to thrive at the Tokyo Olympics, set for this summer, has been delayed a year because of the pandemic.

Looze says King, a world record holder who won a pair of gold medals in the 2016 Olympics in Rio, is doing Cross Fit training three times a week and swimming four times a week.

“That’s a lot less than she’d normally do,” Looze says, “but more than probably 99 percent of people are doing.

“For these athletes who are record holders or Olympic gold medalists like Lily, their degree of dedication and sacrifice is as high as it could be. We’re just making sure we’re safe in how we go about that. To the best of our abilities, given what she is, we follow the guidelines of health and safety.”

If the Tokyo Games were still on, Looze says, Olympians such as King and Miller would be, “Training very intensely right now. They don’t want to get completely detrained.”

Looze adds that another former IU swimmer and Olympic hopeful, Annie Lazor, had taken a year off before returning to competition.

“She said, I don’t think there’s a big difference between taking three months or a year off. Either way, you’re starting at Square One. It will be interesting.”

As far as Indiana training, Looze says, “Everybody is on the sideline right now. In swimming, we usually take August as a break time. We’re looking at it now as that break, but I have a feeling this will be a much larger break.

“When we do get to return to training, and we will, this will end sometime, I don’t think it will be a situation where you ring a bell and everybody can come back right away. It will be a gradual return for everybody.

“I’m preparing myself that it won’t be until the fall that we have a normal resumption of training. We’re trying to keep people as fit as possible now. Once we get them back, then build them up.”