Elizabeth Cahill remembers touring the Syracuse campus a year and a half ago.

It wasn’t the tour that convinced her SU was the school for her. Instead, she remembers it for a subtle bit of false information that sums up the current state of the SU swimming and diving program.

‘They told us there was no swim team,’ Cahill said. ‘A girl asked the tour guide, and he just said no. It was as if the team never existed.’

Cahill was going into her senior year of high school when she took that tour in July 2009. Now a freshman at Syracuse, she’s one of 10 non-senior, non-scholarship swimmers competing for the very varsity program she thought never existed.

This Friday and Saturday at Webster Pool, those 10 walk-ons will swim alongside the five scholarship seniors in the Big East Last Chance Invitational against Villanova and Providence — the final home meet in Syracuse’s swimming and diving history.

For the seniors, the meet brings them one step closer to the end of a demoralizing four-year ‘phase out’ that has sapped the relevance from the once nationally acclaimed program. But for the non-senior SU swimmers, this weekend marks a premature end to the varsity careers they were privileged to enjoy.

‘It’s a shame for Coach (Lou) Walker and the underclassmen,’ said SU senior Kuba Kotynia. ‘They don’t deserve for the program to end.’

All 10 walk-ons are underclassmen who were all-conference swimmers in high school. They all received legitimate attention from a series of smaller colleges, but none of them were fast enough to garner top-flight collegiate attention.

Sophomore Chad Flanick received a full-scholarship offer during his senior year of high school to swim at Division III Ohio Northern University. He declined it after getting accepted to SU’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science.

‘I considered ONU, but I wanted a bigger school with a bigger environment,’ Flanick said.

Cahill never even considered swimming as a collegiate option. She ignored more than 10 letters during her junior year of high school from similar Division III schools in her home state of California.

‘I love swimming, but I wasn’t going to be an Olympic swimmer, so I never really planned on doing it in college,’ Cahill said.

Flanick, Cahill and the rest of the SU walk-ons always planned on sticking with swimming as a hobby. But the dire state of the SU program gave them a unique opportunity to carry out this ‘hobby’ at a varsity level.

‘When I saw a post about swimming on the ‘(Syracuse University) Class of 2014′ Facebook page, I thought it was a club team,’ Cahill said. ‘So I got even more excited when (senior swimmer) Katie (Lewinski) messaged me and told me it was a varsity team, and she wanted me to join.’

But the walk-ons were fully aware their varsity careers would never come full circle as seniors. This weekend at Webster Pool, that harsh reality will finally rear its ugly head. Nevertheless, they’re thankful for the opportunity.

‘If there’s been one positive about this process, it’s the opportunity that these lifelong swimmers have gotten that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise,’ said SU coach Walker.

In contrast, Kotynia and the rest of the seniors have still been able to salvage their individual careers. All five of them will be participating in the Big East championships in Louisville beginning two weeks from Feb. 2. Kotynia, a breaststroke specialist, still holds a realistic shot at competing in the NCAA championships at the end of March.

Kotynia and his fellow seniors have one final opportunity to represent Syracuse swimming at the Big East and (hopefully for Kuba) at National Championships. For Flanick, Cahill and the rest of the walk-ons, the meet will be a premature end to their college careers but not necessarily a disappointing one.

They are grateful for even having an opportunity. No matter how brief it will be.

‘I look at it as a pleasant extension of my childhood passion, but I’m still going to miss it,’ Flanick said.

jdsaffre@syr.edu

Published on February 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jarrad: jdsaffre@syr.edu