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After Wednesday Relays, Virginia Still Holds Edge on Stanford in National-Title Battle
When the swimmers arrived in Atlanta for the NCAA Women’s Championships, the University of Virginia was undoubtedly the team to beat. The reigning national champions had lost Paige Madden, a three-time individual winner from last year’s meet, but added a pair of stellar freshman in sprinter Gretchen Walsh and Olympic silver medalist Emma Weyant to go along with a core led by returning NCAA champions and Olympic medalists Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh.
The Cavaliers entered seeded to finish about 125 points ahead of the closest competition, a Stanford team reloaded with elite talent including freshman Regan Smith and Torri Huske and the returning Taylor Ruck. On night one in Atlanta, as Virginia and Stanford each finished first in a relay (neither one a surprising result), nothing changed in the status quo of the race for the national title. Virginia still holds the advantage.
Sure, the Cavaliers were slightly off their brilliant form from the ACC Championships last month. The 200 medley relay squad swam 0.35 slower, a difference mostly coming from Alexis Wenger’s breaststroke split. Douglass’ anchor split was 20.55, exactly one hundredth behind her split from ACCs. Gretchen Walsh led off in 22.81, one hundredth ahead of her conference-meet split, although Katharine Berkoff did finish a fingernail ahead in 22.76 to take over the status of fastest 50 backstroker in history. But all in all? Slightly off, no big deal.
The story was the same on the 800 free relay. Virginia was not expected to challenge Stanford for that victory, and the Cavaliers swam slower than at the ACC Championships by a whopping… one tenth. Alex Walsh was still a 1:41 on her split, so that result did nothing to challenge the notion that Walsh will be the national-title favorite in Thursday’s 200 IM and a really strong contender for the win in the 400 IM and 200 butterfly later in the meet. So Virginia ended up with 74 points, exactly matching its projected total from the first two relays.
Stanford then was brilliant in the 800 free relay, particularly as Torri Huske went under 1:42 from a flat start for the first time and then Taylor Ruck announced her return to the NCAA Championships with authority as she split 1:40.49 on the second leg. Ruck is actually seeded 19th in the individual 200 free later in the meet at 1:44.53, but don’t let that entry time fool you: she is a bona fide national-championship contender if she can repeat her relay form.
But if there was a chance for Stanford to step forward and lay the groundwork for a true challenge to Virginia, those hopes took a hit 25 yards into the medley relay. Smith, the American-record holder and top seed in the 100 and 200 back, split 24.31, more than a second-and-a-half behind Berkoff. Unfortunately for the Cardinal, Smith slipped on her turn and was not able to recover, and she split more than a second off her time in the same relay from the Pac-12 Championships.
Stanford ended up slipping from the seventh seed in the event to 10th, although it’s worth noting that combining Smith’s Pac-12 splits with improved efforts from Allie Raab, Emma Wheal and Anya Goeders Thursday would have put Stanford into fifth place at the end of the race. However, that’s merely a 14-point loss, by no means a positive outcome but not nearly the disappointment of a relay DQ. Six years ago, at the last NCAA Championships in Atlanta, Stanford touched first in the 200 free relay but was disqualified — and that turned out to be the difference in a painfully-close national-title race.
So we’ll see if that medley relay disappointment comes back to bite Stanford at the end, but challenging the Cavaliers at this year’s meet was already a huge ask for the Cardinal. After the first two finals and with 19 events still to go, the landscape of the title race remains the same.
Team Scores Through Wednesday:
1. Virginia 74 2. Texas 58 3. California 56 4. Stanford 54 5. Louisville 46 6. NC State 44 7. Alabama 38 7. Ohio St 38 9. Georgia 34 9. Tennessee 34 11. Florida 26 11. Michigan 26 13. Kentucky 18 13. Southern California 18 15. Wisconsin 14 16. Arizona St 12 17. UNC 10 18. Northwestern 8 18. Indiana 8 20. Virginia Tech 2 20. Arizona 2
