NCAA Women’s Championships: Marvelous Final Lap Delivers Repeat 200 Fly Title For Emma Sticklen

Emma Sticklen -- Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

NCAA Women’s Championships: Marvelous Final Lap Delivers Repeat 200 Fly Title For Emma Sticklen

The University of Texas women sit in second place at the NCAA Championships, poised to reach runnerup status on the national level for the second consecutive year. Entering the final individual swimming race of the meet, however, Texas had yet to win a single title, with the top result coming in the 100 butterfly when Emma Sticklen, Olivia Bray and Kelly Pash finished second, third and fourth, respectively.

Sticklen would race the 200 fly on the final day, seemingly the team’s best hope of a winning performance, but entering the final 50 yards, Sticklen sat in a tie for fourth place, almost a second off the pace of Cal’s Rachel Klinker. Bray sat second at that point with Pash third and Sticklen tied with Stanford’s Lillie Nordmann.

But 200 butterfly enthusiasts know that Sticklen cannot be discounted down the stretch, not after she came from behind to beat Alex Walsh for the title at last year’s meet, breaking 1:50 for the first time. In 2024, swimming history would repeat itself.

Sticklen, as it turned out, had saved one last burst for the final turn. As Klinker, Pash and Bray popped to the surface, Sticklen was still underwater, kicking out the full 15 meters allowable and vaulting hersrlf into the lead. Her final split of 28.68 was quicker than her third 50 yards and two-thirds of a second clear of anyone in the field.

Sticklen touched in 1:50.99 to take the win. The mark was not the fastest time this season (Walsh at 1:49.16), Sticklen’s personal best (1:49.95) or even Sticklen’s season-best mark (1:50.31), but it was enough to secure the win.

As Sticklen thought back on the race, she reflected on a moment with three lengths remaining when she took stock of the situation and considered what was necessary in order to pull off the comeback. At that point, the Texas senior fell back on her training.

“At the 125, I was like, ‘I’m behind. Let’s do this,'” Sticklen said. “If there’s ever a race where you just need to have the perfect mental talk for 45, you’ve got to be like, ‘It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s going well. I’m doing it, and I can catch up.’

“Also, I am very confident in the way I finish my races with my underwaters. It’s something that I work on every single day, day in and day out. At practice, even when I’m tired, I do that many underwaters on 200 fly sets when a lot of people don’t want to, so that’s something that really gives me a lot of confidence when I’m going to pull off something like that.”

Critically for Texas, Pash took second in 1:51.57 while Bray held on for fifth (1:52.45) to produce 51 enormous points for Texas to all but seal up second place in the team standings ahead of Florida.

It’s become something of a tradition for Texas to dominate the field in the 200 fly as this marks the fourth consecutive season that Sticklen and Pash have been among the A-finalists at the NCAA Championships in the event. In addition to this season, Bray joined them in the final in 2021 and 2022, and when she skipped the event in 2023 to focus on the 200 backstroke, Dakota Luther qualified for the national final in her lone season with the Longhorns.

“It’s so awesome,” Sticklen said. “It’s become so normal for us. There’s times when I have to take a step back and be like, ‘This is really hard to do.’ If we go back and look back at every major meet in the past three years or so, it’s me, Kelly, Dakota or me, Kelly, Olivia. That is so awesome and so hard to do. It’s just such a blessing to have those girls behind my back when you do a race like that. We love each other so much and have each other’s backs.”

Klinker, meanwhile, grabbed third in 1:51.62, with the Virginia duo of Tess Howley (1:52.41) and Abby Harter (1:52.49) ending up fourth and sixth, respectively.

Event 19  Women 200 Yard Butterfly
=========================================================================
         NCAA: N 1:49.16  2/23/2024 Alex Walsh, Virginia
         Meet: M 1:49.95  3/18/2023 Emma Sticklen, Texas
     American: A 1:48.33  10/20/2023Regan Smith, Sun Devils
      US Open: O 1:48.33  10/20/2023Regan Smith, Sun Devils
         Pool: P 1:51.51  3/23/2024 Olivia Bray, Texas
    Name                 Year School            Prelims     Finals Points 
=========================================================================
                       === Championship Final ===                        
 
  1 Sticklen, Emma         SR Texas             1:51.54    1:50.99P  20  
    r:+0.65  24.72        53.18 (28.46)
        1:22.31 (29.13)     1:50.99 (28.68)
  2 Pash, Kelly            5Y Texas             1:52.09    1:51.57   17  
    r:+0.69  25.11        53.22 (28.11)
        1:22.24 (29.02)     1:51.57 (29.33)
  3 Klinker, Rachel        5Y California        1:51.80    1:51.62   16  
    r:+0.68  25.28        53.02 (27.74)
        1:21.44 (28.42)     1:51.62 (30.18)
  4 Howley, Tess           FR Virginia          1:51.95    1:52.41   15  
    r:+0.67  25.25        53.62 (28.37)
        1:22.86 (29.24)     1:52.41 (29.55)
  5 Bray, Olivia           SR Texas             1:51.51    1:52.45   14  
    r:+0.69  24.43        52.74 (28.31)
        1:21.74 (29.00)     1:52.45 (30.71)
  6 Harter, Abby           SR Virginia          1:52.63    1:52.49   13  
    r:+0.74  25.51        54.01 (28.50)
        1:23.13 (29.12)     1:52.49 (29.36)
  7 Looney, Lindsay        5Y ASU               1:53.13    1:52.80   12  
    r:+0.63  25.28        53.67 (28.39)
        1:23.26 (29.59)     1:52.80 (29.54)
  8 Nordmann, Lillie       JR Stanford          1:52.41    1:52.83   11  
    r:+0.66  24.91        53.35 (28.44)
        1:22.31 (28.96)     1:52.83 (30.52)

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