NCAA Women’s Championships Stacked With International Star-Power
Following an Olympic Games, many of the top female swimmers in the United States have their next major competition at the NCAA Championships. In 2017, Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel and Lilly King all followed up their individual-gold-medal performances at the Rio Olympics with NCAA crowns while Kathleen Baker turned her breakout Olympics into three individual wins at the college meet. The 2022 edition of the national meet saw 200 IM Olympic bronze medalist Kate Douglass take her first steps toward stardom while fellow Tokyo podium finishers Regan Smith and Alex Walsh both scored wins.
Expect more of the same at this year’s meet with the majority of race featuring swimmers with a track record of international success in the long course equivalent events. Five swimmers who graced the Paris Olympic podium will be competing for titles this week in Federal Way, Wash., along with two others who came painfully close to top-three finishes plus two internationally-decorated swimmers who came up short of qualifying for a second Olympics in 2024.
Here are the big-name swimmers in action in each event.
500 Freestyle: Among the top-16 seeds in this event are six swimmers with Olympic experience, although none have ever contended internationally in a 400-meter race. Florida’s Bella Sims, Virginia’s Katie Grimes, Indiana’s Anna Peplowski, Tennessee’s Ella Jansen, Michigan’s Rebecca Diaconescu, Virginia’s Aimee Canny and Florida’s Emma Weyant all raced in Tokyo and/or Paris, and all have won a medal or at least advanced to a second swim at the highest level. Sims and Grimes are two of only six swimmers ever to crack 4:30 in the event, and Sims is the defending NCAA champion.
However, the top seed belongs to Jillian Cox, who narrowly missed the U.S. Olympic team with third-place finishes in both the 400 and 800-meter free at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Cox was an 800-meter finalist at the 2023 World Championships, and she took bronze in the 1500-meter free at the Short Course World Championships in December.
Alex Walsh — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
200 IM: The two top seeds here are two of the three best medley swimmers in the country. Alex Walsh was the 200-meter IM world champion in 2022, and she won silvers at the Tokyo Olympics and 2023 World Champs. She would have earned a medal in Paris, only to be disqualified for an illegal backstroke-to-breaststroke turn. She will race against Torri Huske, who could have challenged for a spot on the Olympic team in the event before scratching the Trials final to focus on the 50 free. Walsh ranks No. 2 all-time in the event, Huske No. 3.
50 Freestyle: As with all the events Gretchen Walsh will race at the NCAA Championships, she has lapped the field, owning the fastest time ever by a significant margin. But in long course, she qualified for the Olympic final of the 50 free and placed fourth, missing the podium by just one hundredth. Two others in the event have Olympic experience: Walsh’s Virginia teammate Claire Curzan, who captured a silver medal in Tokyo as a prelims relay swimmer as well as five individual medals at the long course World Championships, and Cal’s Mary-Ambre Moluh, a World Championships semifinalist in the 50 back.
400 IM: The first event of Friday’s finals session will bring some serious experience into action. Both Grimes and Weyant are two-time Olympians, and this is the best event for both swimmers. Grimes, a freshman for the Cavaliers, has won silver in the long course equivalent event at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships as well as the Paris Olympics while Weyant, in her final NCAAs for the Gators, took silver in Tokyo and bronze at the 2022 Worlds and again in Paris. Since her senior-level international debut, her only missed podium was in 2023, when a controversial DQ at U.S. Nationals kept her off the Worlds team.
100 Butterfly: After a silver-vs.-bronze matchup, we get a gold-silver showdown in the 100 fly. Gretchen Walsh is the fastest swimmer ever in the 100 fly in all three courses, but in the Olympic final, Huske ran her down to win gold by four hundredths. The Stanford junior will have a hard time pulling off such an upset in Walsh’s preferred yards format, but she could join Walsh as the only swimmers ever under 48.
200 Freestyle: Four swimmers who were Olympic semifinalists in the 200-meter free will be in the field here, with USC’s Minna Abraham (Hungary), Virginia’s Aimee Canny (South Africa), Texas’ Erin Gemmell (USA) and Michigan’s Rebecca Diaconescu. But the favorite is likely Anna Peplowski, an Indiana senior who took second at last year’s NCAA Championships before handling a prelims leg of the American women’s 800 free relay that went on to earn silver in the final. Gemmell was also part of that relay, handling legs both in the morning and at night.
100 Breaststroke: Alex Walsh holds the top seed as the only swimmer in the field who has cracked 57 so far this year, but right behind her is Tennessee’s Mona McSharry, who won Olympic bronze in the event in Paris while swimming for her home country of Ireland.
Bella Sims — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
100 Backstroke: This event has Wisconsin’s Phoebe Bacon, a two-time U.S. Olympian in the 200 back, but the favorites are the two swimmers who came up short at the 2024 Trials, Sims and Curzan. Sims became the third swimmer ever under 49 with her performance at the SEC Championships, a result that convinced her to choose this event instead of the 200 free for the national meet. Curzan is seeded right behind at 49.35. Josephine Fuller, Kennedy Noble and Isabelle Stadden have all represented the U.S. internationally, as have the NC State duo of Erika Pelaez and Leah Shackley on the junior level.
1650 Freestyle: The most decorated miler in the field and second-fastest swimmer ever will not be in the top heat. Grimes is currently ranked ninth in the country, so she will aim for a national title in the event from the fastest afternoon heat. She has represented the U.S. internationally in the 1500-meter free along with Katie Ledecky every year since 2022, winning World Championships silver in that first appearance. The final heat will include Weyant and defending national champion Abby McCulloh, but Cox has distinguished herself with the country’s top time this season by six seconds. Behind her is Stanford’s Aurora Roghair, who is nine seconds clear of the third-best swimmer entering the meet.
200 Backstroke: Every standout from the 100 back returns here, except this is the short-course equivalent of the event that brought heartbreak for Curzan and Bacon in 2024. After winning a world title early in the year, Curzan finished third at the U.S. Olympic Trials, seven hundredths behind Bacon. Then in Paris, Bacon was in medal position throughout before slipping to fourth on the last length, four hundredths behind Canada’s Kylie Masse. The Wisconsin fifth-year swimmer has won NCAA titles in this event in 2021 and 2024, but Curzan is the fastest swimmer ever, having gone under 1:47 at the Tennessee Invitational in November.
100 Freestyle: One last Olympic final rematch awaits in the 100 free as Gretchen Walsh and Huske are the top-two seeds. Huske captured silver in the 100-meter free in Paris thanks to a surprising outside-smoke effort while Walsh finished eighth. But this is short course, where Walsh’s best time is one-and-a-half seconds quicker than Huske’s and the fastest in history. As demonstrated in her seven-gold-medal performance at the Short Course World Championships, the format changes makes every bit of difference for Walsh, even against one of the world’s top underwater kickers in Huske.
200 Breaststroke and 200 Butterfly: The last two individual events of the meet are the only ones without internationally-decorated swimmers in the long course equivalent event. McSharry will race the 200 breast, but she has a bit of ground to make up against top-seeded Lucy Bell. In the 200 fly, Alex Walsh holds the NCAA record, but Emma Sticklen was only one hundredth off that mark at the SEC Championships, and the fifth-year Texas swimmer will be going for her third consecutive national title in the event.
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