College Swimming Roundup

Top Swims, Relays, & Meets of the Week.

Author

SWIM NERD
October 25, 2022

COLLEGE SWIMMING ROUNDUP

🏊‍♀️ SWIMS OF THE WEEK 🏊🏽‍♂️

Elite Sprint Crews - Before this season, the fastest men's dual meet 400 Free Relay on record was a 2:52.79 from NC State last year. Nobody else had even been within half a second of that time. That time was beaten three times in just this weekend - and the fastest split on the weekend wasn't even in one of those relays! That actually happened a few days earlier, when Tennessee took on Louisville in Thursday afternoon major conference matchup. Jordan Crooks dove in a second and a half behind Louisville's anchor. Going out 19.37 (he also went 19.35 in the individual 50 - this guy does 19.3s like clockwork), he almost made the deficit up in the first 50. He faded just a bit down the stretch but finished in 41.62, an absolutely absurd dual meet split. The Volunteers (splitting 44.2/44.2/44.5/41.6) would have threatened the record on that swim as well if they'd had their #2 sprinter Gui Caribe in (19.4/42.8 with 18.8 relay anchor on the day, and split 41.9 last weekend). On Friday, Texas, Indiana, and A&M duked it out in Austin, while NC State took on Kentucky. The Wolfpack rode a balanced 43.1/42.9/43.1/43.1 to a 2:52.52, while an hour or so later the Longhorns built a 44.2/43.1/43.0/42.0 to a 2:52.45. The next day, Florida upped the ante against Virginia. McGuire McDuff, Josh Liendo, Eric Friese, and Alberto Mestre settled the dual meet record at a 2:52.24 with 43.9/42.3/43.0/43.0 splits.

Gretchen Walsh and the Virginia Women - Seems the Cavalier ladies like to trade off the spotlight with ridiculous swims. While the men's meet was fairly lopsided on the side of Florida, the Virginia women steamrolled the Gator women on Saturday. With all due respect to Kate Douglass's 47.4 Free/59.2 Breast plus 24.0 Back(?!)/47.0 Free relay legs, the star of the entire day was Gretchen Walsh. She started out blasting a 21.91 butterfly relay split, which happens to be the fastest of all time. She followed that up with a 21.40 50 Free and a mind-boggling 50.53 100 Fly, both all-time dual meet records. She closed her meet up with a 47.6 400 Free Relay leadoff. We'll get into that relay a bit more later.

Record Board - We're able to talk about college dual meet records because, inspired by ASU Associate Head Coach Herbie Behm, Swimming Twitter started compiling a record board. Well, that first draft has to go back to the drawing board after this weekend. Besides aforementioned Florida's 400 FR and G. Walsh's swims, Matt King led off the UVA 400 FR in a record 42.46 and Noah Nichols went a 52.23 100 Breast. That's 6 all-time dual meet records set in one weekend. On top of that, while it won't count for a record because it was in an exhibition heat by himself, Nyls Korstanje popped a 44.95 100 Fly, which appears to be the second ever official sub-45 100 Fly outside of midseason invites, conferences, and NCAAs.

D2 Men's Favorites, Duking it Out From Afar - After Queens and Lindenwood made the big move up to D1, the two favorites for the D2 men's title may be McKendree University and the University of Indianapolis. They were both in impressive action this weekend, with McKendree hosting the two-day McKendree Invite and UIndy taking on Purdue on Friday and former conference rival Grand Valley State on Saturday. UIndy collected 31 top-10 D2 times for the weekend, highlighted by the top three 100 Fly times in D2 from Pitt transfer Serge Ahadzhanian, Kael Yorke, and Bartek Swiderski. McKendree countered with 21, and as is so often the case this season, Jack Lustig led the way dropping 49.0/1:45.9 in the Fly events. Also of note on the women's side for these teams, UIndy's Johanna Buys cranked out a 22.78 50 free, a time that is on .03 off what she went to take 3rd at last year's NCAAs behind two now-D2 Queens swimmers, while Kaitlyn McCoy's 54.9/1:58.6 backstrokes would have both been A-final worthy times at 2022 NCAAs.

🏊🏼 RELAY(S) OF THE WEEK 🏊‍♀️

Virginia Women 400 Free Relay - 3:11.37

Those Men's 400 Free Relays we talked about earlier? This relay blows them out of the water historically. It's the best college dual meet time ever by a few seconds. It's faster than a suited Big Ten all-star relay made up of Beata Nelson, Catie Deloof, Maggie MacNeil, and Siobhan Haughey (which actually was Michigan + Beata, which isn't anything to sneeze at) from 2018. It would have made Top 8 at every NCAA Championships. Just when you think maybe you've seen it all from DeSorbo's ladies, they blast off something new. A tapered, suited 3:05 (averaging better than 46.5) is not out of the question at NCAAs.

🏊🏽‍♂️ MEET OF THE WEEK 🏊🏼

Fordham vs. Marist Men - 140-136

Another meet down to the final relay. In a bit of an oddly scheduled meet, Fordham started strong, winning the 100 back, breast, and fly, all by new additions to the team in Australian freshman Christian Taylor (50.1/1:54 back double), Drexel transfer Paris Raptis, and McKendree transfer Taras Zherebetskyy. But Marist came roaring back, going 1-2 in the 1000 and winning the 200 Free and 50 Free convincingly. The teams traded wins the rest of the meet until that last relay, with the Rams needing a 1-3 finish to pull out the win. Here the newcomers were the heroes again, with Raptis and Zherebetskyy splitting 45.5/46.6 to close out the win for the A relay and Taylor scorching a 45.9 for the 3rd place B relay. Raptis proved to be a Swiss Army Knife (or Greek, as it may be) for the Rams, winning the 200 IM and 200 Fly in addition to that 100 Breast and final relay anchor. Marist's star Ahmed Sallam was strong in defeat, taking the 50/100 double in 21.1/46.6, coming in second to Taylor in the 100 Back in 51.8, and was actually the fastest split across the 400 FR with a 45.3 second leg.

🏊🏽‍♂️ WEEKEND PREVIEW 🏊🏼

Another handful of good meets this weekend:

  • Auburn visits LSU on Thursday. Brooks Curry and Maggie MacNeil go head to head with the much improved Auburn sprint crews.

  • A few intriguing major conference meets on Friday as Ohio State visits Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech goes to Florida State, Florida heads to Georgia and Mizzou battles Indiana. Potential highlight on this last one - Indiana's Brendan Burns got the best of Texas star Carson Foster in both the 200 Back and 200 Fly last weekend. Mizzou brings another long stroke guy in Jack Dahlgren, and the Tigers have a habit of suiting up for some fast in-season times - would be fun (and unprecedented!) to see these guys push each other to at least one of the two events under 1:40 in-season.

  • A GLIAC showdown, Northern Michigan versus Saginaw Valley State and Grand Valley State, headlines the D2 weekend. GVSU, led by freshmen Matt Bosch who leads D2 in the 100 and 200 Free (44.6/1:38.0) and Lucy Hedley who is 3rd in the 100, 1st in the 200, and 2nd in the 500 (51.4/1:49.8/4:57.2), should take the team battle, but SVSU and NMU both have potential NCAA scorers. GVSU also has a 4-year All-American diver named Wrigley Fields - take that how you will!

  • Washington University in St. Louis visiting the University of Chicago is probably the best dual of the D3 weekend. Chicago is a top-10 team in both men and women and has perhaps the best men's butterflier in the division in Jesse Ssengonzi (46.7/1:46.0), while the WashU men finished 9th last year with a balanced team performance.