Polish swimmer Kacper Stokowski has become the 3rd NCAA qualifier to announce a transfer out of the University of Florida this offseason, doing so after just one season in Gainesville. He joins Turkey’s Erge Gezmis and American Maxine Rooney.
Stokowski says that he will sit out the 2019-2020 season while training for the Olympic Games at home in Poland before returning with a new program in the fall of 2020. Unlike Gezmis (NC State) and Rooney (Texas), Stokowski has not yet decided on his landing spot.
Individually, Stokowski finished 9th in the 100 back (44.90) and 35th in the 200 back (1:44.26) at NCAAs last year. He scratched the 100 fly where a season-best time would have put him right on the verge of scoring points.
He also swam on 3 Gator relays at NCAAs: on the prelims of the 200 free relay, as the backstroke leg of their 8th-place 400 medley relay, and as the backstroke leg of their 10th-place 200 medley relay. Only 1 member of the Florida All-America 400 medley relay, their 2nd-best relay at NCAAs, will return next season: rising senior breaststroker Marco Guarante (52.22 split in the NCAA final).
He also scored 76 points individually at the SEC Championships, including a runner-up placement in the 100 back – about half-a-second behind Alabama’s Zane Waddell. Between the 3 All-American transfers alone (Rooney – 87 Gezmis – 43), the Gators have lost 206 points this offseason. The 7-time defending conference champion Gators did have some cushion, though: they return 794.5 pints next season, which is roughly 274.5 more points than the next-closest team, Missouri, returns. With young A&M and Georgia teams not far behind that, though, this should make for a very interesting season of SEC swimming.
He is currently listed in the NCAA transfers database with a “do not contact” label for other programs.
https://swimswam.com/florida-all-american-kacper-stokowski-announces-plan-to-transfer/?fbclid=IwAR2rW8GKm8klrIXcKzOiL1zsXVek1wYSOHUTOpJDbM-Qht-w7pNs0GP_eBw
