Swimming

Derek Maas Was The Best Swimmer in NCAA Division III Swimming This Season

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By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

When the CSCAA announced their 2024 award winners for the D3 National Championship meet, there was a surprising name absent.

NYU 5th year swimmer Derek Maas, who won the 100 breast, 200 breast, 200 IM, and broke Andrew Wilson’s D3 record in the latter, was not awarded the Swimmer of the Year award. That honor went to Connecticut College’s Justin Finkel, who won the 500 free, the 200 fly, and placed 4th in the 200 free.

This story is not about Finkel, who is the unwitting victim of the vote, and he had a fantastic meet, and a spectacular season.

So why didn’t Maas win the award? While no coaches have declared their vote to SwimSwam on-the-record, a preponderance of conversations made it clear that Maas didn’t win the award because coaches didn’t like his celebration after winning the 100 breaststroke.

Here is that celebration.

Maas didn’t point at anybody. He didn’t get in anybody else’s space. He didn’t stare anyone down. He didn’t fall of the lanerope into anybody else’s lane.

He clapped his feet.

Besides the fact that this was a fairly-tame celebration by celebration standards, since when does the nature of a celebration go into the consideration for who was The Best?

This is sports. The award is not a sportsmanship award, this is not a most improved award, a heart of the meet award, a spirit award. This is a performance award.

I think it’s pretty clear why Maas actually didn’t get the vote. A segment of D3 coaches were upset that Maas came in and crashed their party. He transferred to NYU as a 5th year, afforded to him by NCAA rules, and interrupted their plans.

Maas was an All-American at the University of Alabama, and swam the 2023-2024 season while attending his first year of NYU medical school.

A better swimmer came along, and they didn’t like that. Any talk about the celebration being the reason is clearly a red-herring to cover for the bruised egos.

I’ve been there. When I was in high school, I swam for a very good high school team in the state of Texas. We had a very small senior class, and the only other junior boy on the team was named Evan Ryser. He entered the season as the presumptive favorite to win the Texas 5A State title in the 200 yard freestyle – until a swimmer you may be more familiar with showed up for his senior year. In preparation of his commitment to the Texas Longhorns, Michael Klueh moved to Texas and began attending Austin Bowie High School, and won the title this year.

Of course we were mad. This outsider, who we didn’t count on, came in and downed our hero, and we were teenage boys who lacked perspective on the world.

But my hope would be that our coach would have the perspective we lacked and recognized that this swimmer worked just as hard to get to where they were, if not harder, and that this shouldn’t disqualify him from any honors – so long as all of the same rules were followed by everybody.

Someone has to stand up in sports sometimes and allow the competition to be the thing. Someone has to be the ‘bigger person’ and recognize excellence. That’s what this award is designed to do.

I have coaches, athletes, and parents from lower divisions in my inbox almost weekly informing me about how D3 swimmers are ‘just as good’ and ‘just as important’ as D1 swimmers. A vote to not give a former D1 swimmer an award because he used to be a D1 swimmer belies those statements.

For your enjoyment, here is Louisville swimmer Joao de Lucca doing the same thing after winning a D1 title a decade ago. Nobody was offended in the making of this video.

SwimSwam: Derek Maas Was The Best Swimmer in NCAA Division III Swimming This Season

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