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COLLEGE SWIMMING ROUNDUP
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🏊♀️ SWIMS OF THE WEEK 🏊🏽♂️
One meet this week, and it was a doozy.
GOAT Round 2: Leon Marchand
The King was crowned at Men's DI NCAAs this week. Is this a repeat of last week with KD? Sure, but what else do you call the meet and season Leon Marchand of Arizona State had?
22.27 200 medley relay breast split (fastest ever)
1:28.42 800 free relay anchor (fastest ever)
1:36.34 200 IM (1st, NCAA record, fastest ever)
3:28.82 400 IM (1st, NCAA record, fastest ever)
49.23 400 medley relay breast split (fastest ever)
1:46.91 200 breast (1st, NCAA record, fastest ever)
40.55 400 free relay split
He attacked every race like it was a 50, and kicked out to at least halfway on every turn. He made the newly crowned American record holder who also almost broke the 200 back NCAA record look slow on backstroke in the 200 IM:
Only a sophomore, he's got two more years to "figure out" the little bit of fading he did on last 50s, but that was an epic meet. How spoiled are we to be able to watch perhaps the two greatest college swimmers ever on back-to-back weeks?
Men's DI NCAA Championships
Leon's greatness was the headline, but this whole meet was one of the best NCAA men's championships in history.
To start out, every relay record was broken - including the legendary super-suited 2009 Auburn 200 free relay, which was absolutely smashed by the Florida Gators. Josh Liendo led off in a PR 18.22 that would have won the individual event and Adam Chaney (18.37), Eric Friese (18.64) and MacGuire McDuff (18.12) took it from there for a 1:13.35. Note that Cal, led by sophomore breakout Jack Alexy (18.12 second leg) was also under 1:14 and the old record. These two teams also duked it out in the closest race of the weekend, the 400 free relay. Liendo again led off against Cal's Bjorn Seeliger, staking a 40.66-41.50 lead, while the Golden Bears tried to claw back in the last three legs:
In the long free relay the first day, Luke Hobson announced his mid-distance domination of the meet with 1:29.63 leadoff. Looks like he's following the Townley Haas mile-to-100-free transformation almost to a T. Coby Carrozza (1:30.50) and Peter Larson (1:33.14) held down the middle, while Carson Foster (1:30.15) had to hold off hard-charging Marchand's aforementioned NCAA-fastest split ever for a 6:03.42 record. Never bet against Texas in the 800 Free Relay.
Of course, some love should also be paid to the medley relays - NC State opened the meet with the most complete 200 medley relay we've ever seen for a 1:20.67 record there (Stokowski 20.36/Hunter 22.95/Korstanje 19.15/Curtiss 18.21), while Florida now owns 3 NCAA relay records as they won the 400 medley in 2:58.32 (Chaney 44.28/Hillis 50.23/Liendo 42.91/McDuff 40.90).
Outside of Leon's 3 event sweep, there was only one double event winner - Hobson crushed a 4:07.37 500 and a 1:30.43 200.
There were, however, a bunch of first time individual event winners (including Hobson). Jordan Crooks capped off a season as the best pure short course sprinter in the sport with a 18.32 50 free win following up on his SC World Champs 50 free win. Virginia Tech's Youssef Ramadan (43.15 100 fly) and Liendo (40.28 100 free) became the second fastest swimmers in history with their wins, NC State's Aiden Hayes ran down defending champ Indiana's Brendan Burns (who won the 100 back in 43.61 in a bit of an upset over defending champ Stokowski and Destin Lasco) in the 200 fly on the last 50 (1:38.79):
And, Hayes's teammate Will Gallant went 1-2 with his distance training partner Ross Dant (who had the top time from the early heats) to win the mile in 14:28.94. Did you forget that Mark Bernardino is still part of the Wolfpack staff?
On the sentimental front, Minnesota's Max McHugh took his third consecutive 100 breast championship in his home pool in his last college meet with a 50.00 win. You may remember that McHugh also came back from being shot in the leg in the summer of 2019. This was a heck of a career for one of the finest short course breaststrokers in history.
McHugh was followed for runner-up by another fifth-year and fascinating arc: Indiana's Van Mathias came into college as a flyer/200 IMer with a 100 breast PR of 55.9. Over the past couple years, he's reinvented himself as a sprinter/breaststroker and the catalyst of Indiana's relays. His transformation culminated in a runner-up 50.60 100 breast (50.57 prelims), scoring in the 50 free (18.89) and 100 free (41.33) as well. For fun, this is what his 100 breast improvement curve looked like:
The team race was close throughout. Arizona State took the lead on day 1 with second place finishes in both relays. Cal and Texas had big day 2s to pull ahead, with ASU, NC State and Florida bunched up behind with 9 points separating them. The third day saw ASU use huge points in the 400 IM, 200 free, and 100 back to get within 13 points of Cal with Texas 10 back. By the end of Day 4 diving, Cal's big points in the 100 free, 200 back (A notable Lasco 1:35.87/Hugo Gonzalez 1:36.72 1-2), and 200 fly guaranteed them the championship, and ASU was slotted into the runner-up spot, but 3-4-5-6 were still up for grabs in the last relay thanks largely to Indiana's 1-3 platform diving performance and NC State's distance double. In the end, Florida's win wasn't enough to move them up. Texas's Caspar Corbeau and Peter Larson out back-halfed Indiana's Gavin Wight and Rafael Miroslaw to hold on to 3rd place overall with the Hoosiers taking the final podium spot.
What a meet. What a college season for the ages!
THANK YOU!
This is the final College Swimming Roundup of the season. Thank you all for reading — it has been well received with some super high open rates, nearly hitting 50% some weeks. Let us know what you think by voting and commenting below, perhaps suggesting something else we should do in the off-season.
We will continue to pump out, "This Week in Swimming", which comes out every Monday morning showcasing the fastest swims around the world, the most important swimming headlines, plus the swim set and swimming meme of the week.
BTW, did you see our latest interview with Kaii Winkler, the top recruit in the country? He's taken trips to NC State, Arizona State, Florida, Texas, and is also looking at Cal...
Looks like the rich will get richer.
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