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NCAA Women’s Championships: Texas Longhorns Quietly Producing Stellar Third-Place Showing
If you have only been paying attention to winners and second-place finishers this week at the NCAA Women’s Championships, you would have missed the University of Texas entirely. You would have seen a lot of the University of Virginia, the team running away with its second consecutive national title, and Stanford and NC State have also achieved a healthy number of top-two finishes. But through 14 of 21 events, no Texas.
And yet, the Longhorns sit in third place after night three, 68 points ahead of fourth-place NC State and behind only Virginia and Stanford.
Head coach Carol Capitani’s group placed third at last year’s championships, the best finish for her teams since Capitani took over the program at the start of the 2012-13 season. Texas was one of the most successful programs in the country during the 1980s and early 1990s, winning seven national titles in eight years from 1984 through 1991, but the team has not been first or second since 1994.
Based on the seed times heading into the meet, it looked like Texas would be hard-pressed to match that 2021 success, with the seeds adding up to a sixth-place finish. But just like last year, Texas has out-performed its expectations.
The most well-known swimmer on this Texas squad is Erica Sullivan, the Olympic silver medalist in the 1500 freestyle from the Tokyo Games. Sullivan’s distance freestyle skills make the college format a bit tougher for her since she is only a threat to score in two events and not a factor on relays, but she has delivered in her only event so far. She was seeded 14th in the 500 free, but she finished third in the final. Sullivan is seeded ninth in Saturday’s 1650 free, meaning she will swim in the final afternoon heat instead of against her top competitors at night, but she is certainly capable of putting together a top-three effort (or better) under those circumstances. She is the second-fastest swimmer ever in the 1650.
But the driving force behind Texas’ success, last year and this year, has been Kelly Pash. The Carmel, Ind., native was a three-time A-finalist in her first NCAAs last year, topping out at third place in the 200 free, and she has already finished third twice so far in Atlanta. She was behind only Olympians Alex Walsh and Torri Huske in the 200 IM, and only Taylor Ruck and Isabel Ivey got the better of Pash in the 200 free. Even though she maintained the exact same place as last season, Pash swam almost a second faster than she did in 2021 (1:42.38 compared to 1:43.50 last year).
Texas had five A-finalists on Friday, with two of those performances belonging to Olivia Bray in the 100 fly and 100 back. In addition, Emma Sticklen was fourth in the 100 fly, and Anna Elendt took fifth in the 100 breast after recording the meet’s fastest time (56.88) in prelims. And we cannot forget about diving, where Texas has gotten big points from Hailey Hernandez (A-final) in the one-meter event and three-meter event and from Paola Pineda on three-meter, plus B-final points from Pineda (one-meter) and Jordan Skilken (three-meter).
Relays have been good to Texas as well as the Longhorns took fifth in the 200 medley relay, fourth in the 800 free relay and another fourth-place finish in the 400 medley relay from Bray, Elendt, Sticklen and Pash.
Texas finished night three with 257 points, only 21 points behind star-studded, second-place Stanford. The Cardinal is seeded to outscore Texas by 41 points on the final day, so catching Stanford might be a tough task, but the Longhorns have been overachieving all week. Sometimes that’s all a team needs at the NCAAs, swim season-best times and let the scoreboard handle the rest. The Longhorns have done that, and despite a lack of spotlight-stealing headlines, Texas sits in a solid third place heading into the meet’s final day and barring any major changes Saturday, likely to stay there.
