NCAA Swim of the Year (Female): Kate Douglass Obliterates Competition, Records in 200 IM
Any of the three individual swims Kate Douglass recorded at her final NCAA Championships would have been fine choices for the NCAA Swim of the Year.
In a hyped 100 butterfly showdown featuring world champion Torri Huske and Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil, Douglass earned a narrow victory while swimming four tenths quicker than the previous record. Douglass also swam the fastest 200 breaststroke ever for the fourth time in one year. Douglass’ University of Virginia teammate Gretchen Walsh also had a case for the award after she swam a 48.26 to win the 100 backstroke.
But the most stunning performance of the NCAA Women’s Championships last March in Knoxville, Tenn., came in the 200 individual medley, when Douglass came up against a pair of 2022 individual world champions in Huske and Alex Walsh, the latter of whom was the two-time defending national champion in the event and fastest swimmer ever at 1:50.08.
After winning Olympic bronze in the 200-meter IM in 2021, Douglass avoided any medley swimming for the next year, choosing instead to focus on sprint freestyle and butterfly plus the 200 breaststroke. But after winning a short course world title in the 200-meter IM in December 2022, Douglass made her grand return to the event. In 2023, Douglass switched her NCAAs Thursday event from the 50 free to the 200 IM, even after winning the splash-and-dash two years in a row, and Douglass upstaged the favorites.
Douglass never trailed in the medley final, and her splits were fastest in the field on all four strokes. She went out in 23.51 on butterfly, putting her five hundredths ahead of Huske, and even though backstroke is her weakest stroke, Douglass extended the margin with a 27.40 split. Fifty yards of breaststroke covered in 31.38 put her almost one second up on Walsh, and then she pulled away on the freestyle leg by coming home in 26.08.
Huske finished in 1:50.06, with Walsh one hundredth behind in 1:50.07. Both swimmers edged the time Walsh had recorded one year earlier for the American, NCAA and U.S. Open records in the event. But Douglass was on another planet, more than a bodylength ahead. She became the first woman under 1:50 in the event, and she skipped over 1:49 entirely. She came in at 1:48.37 to reset all the applicable records in the race.
“Yeah, definitely not,” Douglass said when asked if she thought a 1:48 was a possibility. “I feel like I was pretty confident I could do something like that in that race. Two years ago, I went 1:50.9 in this pool, and I feel like I’m a much better swimmer now than I was then. That’s kind of why I chose this race. I wanted to have one last really good 200 IM, and I was confident that I could do that.”
Four months later, Douglass became the world champion in the long course edition of the 200 IM, overtaking Walsh down the stretch as the University of Virginia teammates went 1-2. Once again an individual medley specialist, Douglass now enters 2024 with Olympic medal aspirations in numerous events, including the 200-meter IM, with her college career having launched her into long course success.