Freshman makes a splash
By: Justin Feil
As much as Princeton University head women’s swim coach Susan Teeter believes that every year athletes pass up scholarship offers to big schools to come for an Ivy League education, few that do so are at the level of Alicia Aemisegger.
It is why she is drawing some attention. The Tigers freshman is an early selection to the United States 2007 World Championship team and is one of the premier swimmers in the country of any age. Being a swimmer is also why Aemisegger hasn’t gotten more attention. It’s not as high profile as some collegiate sports.
To put Aemisegger’s impact into terms using a sport that people follow more closely, it’s not as though top freshman Greg Oden is passing up Ohio State to come be a dominant center on the Princeton University men’s basketball team, but that’s not as great a stretch as it might seem. That’s what a coup it is for Princeton to bring in Aemisegger. She is one of the 20 best swimmers in the nation.
Go back to basketball. Consider a few names from the 2005 World University basketball team: Villanova’s Randy Foye, Syracuse’s Gerry McNamara, Boston College’s Craig Smith, Kentucky’s Patrick Sparks and Duke’s Shelden Williams, to name a few. Imagine one of them suiting up for the Princeton basketball team.
It’s what it’s like for the Tiger swim team to welcome Aemisegger, who crushed the program’s 400 individual medley record in her first swim. She only figures to get better.
Sure, Princeton has gotten its share of high-profile athletes, but Aemisegger follows a trend that sees them coming in sports that are not as highly profiled.
Yasser El Halaby was a four-time national champion, in squash, a sport that may be played worldwide quite extensively but has limited collegiate opportunities. Soren Thompson came to Princeton and won a national championship, in fencing. The Princeton University women’s lacrosse team has players that could have gone to scholarship schools as does the men’s team, but both play in a still growing collegiate sport.
If athletes in big-name sports were passing up big scholarship schools for Princeton more often, those sports contested by a majority of Division I school, there would be more attention thrown to the Ivy League.
If a football recruit chose the Tigers over the LSU Tigers, or even the Clemson Tigers, that would make news. If a baseball recruit opted for Princeton over Oklahoma State, people would take notice.
It’s what Aemisegger did. She chose Princeton over such schools as 2006 NCAA team runner-up Georgia, No. 6 Southern California and No. 10 Florida, as well as Virginia. She is already a school record holder. She could knock off the Ivy League records if she goes for them. She may be a future Olympian.
And when she graduates, she will have a Princeton degree. It’s something that will surely last beyond anything she does in her swimming career, though erasing her name from the record books won’t be easy.

