When high-school athletes join the University of Toronto swimming team, they typically come with one goal: represent Canada.

“It’s always there sitting in the front of their brain because obviously you need to work really hard to get to that level, you’ve got to improve. And that means you’ve got to push yourself. And there is a carrot at the end there,” said Byron MacDonald, the U of T head coach and CBC Sports swimming analyst.

The same goes on the West Coast too, where Derrick Schoof leads a University of British Columbia program featuring multiple Canadian Olympians.

“Culturally inside of the sport of swimming, every time I speak to a recruit, they all say, ‘I want to make a national team. I want to represent Canada,'” Schoof said.

“It’s just very culturally ingrained in our sport that the epitome is to make a team one day.”

At the Paris Olympics last summer, Canada swimmers with U Sports ties included U of T’s Kylie Masse, Manitoba’s Kelsey Wog and Finlay Knox, Emma O’Croinin, Ingrid Wilm, Blake Tierney and Yuri Kisil of UBC.

Kayla Sanchez, who recently switched allegiances from Canada to the Philippines, also currently competes at UBC.

Sanchez, Knox, O’Croinin and Tierney are all now set to compete at the U Sports national championships, which will be held at the U of T pool from March 6-8. Live streaming coverage will be available on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. Live streaming schedule is available here.

University of British Columbia’s Kayla Sanchez, who switched swimming allegiances from Canada to the Philippines, is scheduled to compete in Toronto. (Petr David Josek/The Associated Press)

MacDonald said tickets are sold out at the 4,000-seat venue, which can sometimes feel like more given its fishbowl shape.

“I think that it’s a learning experience. Obviously the Olympic trials or whatever are a huge learning experience as well, but there aren’t a lot of people that go to their first Olympic trials and knock it out of the park. They’ve usually had to have some type of an experience before,” MacDonald said.

Schoof said he is looking forward to seeing his athletes adapt to the new surroundings and overcome the pressure — even when they’re racing against each other.

“You’re going to see Blake and Finlay racing each other. Well, they’re going to try to beat each other, even though they’re teammates, right? So it’s going to be a great opportunity for a lot of Canadian university athletes to really take it to the next level,” Schoof said.

Added motivation

There may be another reward at nationals, too. U Sports is currently finalizing details on a deal that would send select non-Olympic swimmers to compete in a dual meet against England over the summer.

Several U Sports coaches said the opportunity could be a game-changer in giving U Sports athletes international experience and helping fulfill that initial goal of wearing the Maple Leaf.

“Perfect timing, first year of an [Olympic] quadrennial, identify some talents, get them in that pressure situation, go overseas, learn how to travel and compete really quickly. Hopefully, we’ll do it every year or every couple of years,” MacDonald said.

But as U Sports continues to use itself as a stepping stone to the Olympics, more and more swimmers are eschewing Canada for the U.S. college system — Maggie Mac Neil and Josh Liendo, to name two.

MacDonald, who has helmed the U of T program since 1978, said it may simply be a trend.

“Now there’s even more money in the United States. There’s unlimited scholarships available and that’s gonna make it pretty tough to compete to keep athletes here. My concern always is that the logarithms that sport Canada uses to dictate who gets federally funded are really skewed for young kids,” MacDonald said.

With the proliferation of NIL (name, image, likeness) in the U.S., scholarships increased from nine (half of a team) to 18 while athletes can also go south of the border and make more money based off their performance.

But Schoof warned that many athletes who move to the U.S. have a hard time breaking through.

“If you’re one of the very best kids and you’re going to a Texas and you’re trained by Bob Bowman and you’ve got millions of dollars for your budget, I understand that. … But the majority of kids that go down there, you never really hear from again,” he said.

Fear of shrinking Olympic pathways

However, the flipside of NIL is that schools are redirecting their funds to revenue giants like football and basketball, which has led to fear, MacDonald said, of swimming programs being cut — as Michigan, Iowa, Dartmouth and others did after the pandemic.

Not that similar problems don’t exist in Canada — Acadia University announced the closure of its pool earlier this month over financial concerns.

And so as Olympic pathways shrink, MacDonald and Schoof lean on athletes’ post-sports careers as their pitch for U Sports.

“When you’re 24 and you’re done swimming, you’re gonna need to fall on your degree to get to the next level,” MacDonald said.

Schoof also noted that the main reason swimmers come through U Sports in the first place, while other athletes may not, is the lack of a successful professional league — like an NHL, NBA or Premier League — at the top.

The structure leaves U Sports closer to the top of the sport pyramid than other sports, while athletes often experience their primes during that five-year U Sports eligibility window.

“You don’t need to be old to be fast. You saw Summer McIntosh, right? And there’s been many, many, many, many swimmers. Michael Phelps was 15 when he was fifth at the Olympics. So swimming is a very unique sport,” Schoof said.

It’s also one in which Canada has excelled despite the slow march to the U.S.

But MacDonald said he doesn’t see that lasting forever.

“The pendulum will swing back, particularly if they start dropping programs in the U.S., which some people think might start to happen,” he said.

“We have good programs, good coaches here. And if you have breakthroughs with the athletes, then you know what? The pendulum can swing back again.”