Female NCAA Swim of the Year: Gretchen Walsh Reaches 47-Second Territory in 100 Fly
One year earlier, the 100 butterfly final at the NCAA Women’s Championships featured the three fastest women in history (at the time), and the race did not disappoint: Kate Douglass was the winner that night, clocking 48.46 to beat reigning Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil by five hundredths as both crushed the existing U.S. Open and NCAA records in the event. Torri Huske, who went on to win Olympic gold in the 100-meter fly just over a year later, became the third woman ever under 49 with her third-place finish.
The 2023 final was missing all those women, with Douglass and Mac Neil done with college swimming and Huske taking an Olympic redshirt. But the winning time was a full second faster as a swimmer who did not even compete in the 100 fly one year previously turned the event into her personal dominion. Gretchen Walsh had opted instead for the 100 backstroke on the middle day of the NCAA Championships during each of her first two college seasons, but the switch to butterfly in 2023-24 was a record-breaking one.
The record Douglass set in March 2023 was toast in the early days of the 2024-25 season. Walsh clocked 48.30 at the Tennessee Invite in November, albeit unofficially as she was racing the 100 free, and then the University of Virginia Cavalier swam even faster at the ACC Championships in February with a mark of 48.25. She started out her NCAA Championships by crushing the all-time records in the 50 freestyle before going 48.26 in the 100 fly prelims, just a tick off her record.
That evening, she made any previous times and everyone else in the field look silly. She was out in 9.94 at the 25-yard mark and 21.75 at the halfway point, two-thirds of a second under record pace and making it clear that she would indeed become the first woman under 48. Walsh capped off her breathtaking swim by touching the wall in 47.42.
“The goal was to break the 48-barrier, and going that far under it was something that I also thought was unheard of,” Walsh said. “I’m really ecstatic with the time, and I think I executed the race really well and exactly how I wanted to. Everything just came together, and that was the time I put up, and I’m really happy with it.”
The swim would be the highlight of an incredible NCAA Championships for Walsh, who later that night just missed her own American and NCAA records in the 100 back leading off Virginia’s 400 medley relay, falling marginally short of her otherworldly goal of becoming the first woman under 48 over 100 yards of fly and back in the same night. She would finish the meet by taking down the all-time record in the 100 free previously held by Simone Manuel.
Amazingly, Walsh has already beaten this incredible 100 fly record during the first half of her senior season at UVA. Returning to the Tennessee Invite, she won the 100 fly in 47.35, and she could try to reach 46 territory by the end of the season. Having become a world-record holder, an Olympian and the star of the Short Course World Championships since her last collegiate showcase, Walsh has one more chance to make her mark on college swimming with another set of incredible records for generations of future sprinters to chase.