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DOUBLE FEATURE: COLLEGE SWIMMING & JUNIOR NATS
🏊♀️ SWIMS OF THE WEEK 🏊🏽♂️
Speedo Junior Nationals
Going to hit a little double feature here as the college landscape was a little sparse this weekend. We’ll start in the Midwest, where Westmont, IL and Columbus, OH hosted the split East-West Winter Junior Nationals meet. Four swimmers in particular popped some historic times.
The first, and most historically significant, swim came from Carmel’s Alex Shackell, who swam a 21.95 200 medley relay fly split to open up her meet. That split matches the fastest 50 fly split ever, tying Kate Douglass, a swimmer you may have heard of before. That was the harbinger for a banger of a meet by the Cal commit. All said and done, she’d finish up with 21.71/47.61/1:42.72 frees and 49.49/1:50.15 flys, with a 49.25 fly relay split to boot.
Charlotte Crush made her mark primarily with a couple of relay leadoffs. The 15 year old led off her team’s championship 200 medley relay with a 23.32 backstroke leg, and the 400 medley relay with a 49.53 - the second fastest ever swum by an American junior, breaking the 15-16 NAG by half a second. Her other results were strong as well with a 22.02 free, 50.46 fly, 1:51.74 back, 47.50 free relay split.
On the boys’ side, Worlds finalist Thomas Heilman at the East meet and World Junior record holder Maximus Williamson at the West meet had a virtual back and forth in some of their best events, resulting in a whole bunch of NAG records (Heilman being 15-16 and Williamson 17-18). Heilman, the big flyer from Cavalier Aquatics, compiled 19.24/42.00/1:32.00 frees, 44.80/1:40.73 flys, a 1:41.41 IM, and a 54.40 100 breast for S&Gs, adding 19.87/44.20 fly relay splits. Williamson, leading a strong Lakeside Aquatics team, swam a fairly similar lineup, with 19.46/41.92/1:31.37 frees, 21.96/47.17 backs, 1:41.18 IM, and a 1:55.16 200 breast.
Some other notables on the weekend:
14-year-old Audrey Derivaux continues to rack up Junior Nats finals appearances with the older girls. The versatile youngster got A finals appearances in the 200 back (1:52.75), 100 fly (53.35), 200 fly (1:55.90), 200 IM (1:56.73), and 400 IM (4:08.51), topping out at 3rd in the 200 back and 400 IM.
Also from the younger end of the age spectrum comes summer sensation 14-year-old Shareef Elaydi, who got second swims in both flys (48.11/1:46.88) and the 200 IM (1:48.80).
Lucca Battaglini got the best of Heilman in the 50 free, blasting out a 19.06 PR. He’s not a one-trick pony though, as he also went 42.88 in the 100 free, 46.64 100 back, and 46.04 100 fly.
Meanwhile, Williamson also took a defeat in the 200 breast to Jake Eccleston, who just barely missed the meet record with a 1:52.95. He’d also win the 100 in 52.74.
A mess of ladies cracked the 22 second mark in the 50 free in addition to Shackell - Julie Mishler (21.87), Caroline Larsen (21.93), and Katie Belle Sikes (21.95) did it in the individual, while Jillian Crooks (21.95) did it leading off the 200 free relay.
Another Worlds finalist, Leah Hayes got in the action with some short course swimming, something she only really does rested occasionally. Her 1:53.57 200 IM was a PR and fastest between both meets, and she also added strong 48.35/1:44.47 frees, a PR 2:09.68 200 breast, and a 4:03.82 400 IM.
The East meet featured two of the best junior male backstrokers we’ve seen in Johnny Crush and Baylor Stanton. Crush took the 100 back title (45.56), adding 21.39/1:44.22 in the other two backstrokes, sneaking under 20 in the 50 free for the first time (19.99), and adding 43.50/4:25.62 frees and a 47.00 100 fly; for his part, Stanton took the 200 back (1:41.14) and added 46.57 in the 100, and 1:44.04/3:45.39 IMs.
This is always a good one - the oldest and most storied rivalry in sports. Graced by Rowdy Gaines play-by-play, the Midshipmen snuck past the Golden Knights men to avenge their streak-breaking 2022 loss 153-147, while the Navy womens’ streak increased to 35 years with a 162-138 win. The details:
Navy freshman Ben Irwin broke a conference record in the 200 back in his first Army/Navy meet - his day totaled 21.44/46.18/1:41.50 backs and a 47.10 100 fly.
Fellow Navy freshman Ela Habjan also broke a conference backstroke record, hers in the 100, to top a 24.96/52.87/1:55.79 backstroke day.
Aurelie Migault continued her strong campaign, sweeping the breaststrokes in 1:00.34/2:09.92, the latter a PR, and adding a 2:00.14 200 IM win.
Navy’s Molly Webber swept the longer frees, 1:46.88/4:49.74/9:58.91, bookending the distances with PRs.
Army kept themselves in the men’s meet through the strength of their longer freestyle groups. Big players in those disciplines were Wes Tate (1:35.14/4:20.16 PRs), Ian Tansill (4:27.55/9:02.00), Clayton Bernauer (4:27.72/9:05.58 PR), and Brice Barrieault (9:05.67).
The Navy mean got a huge breakout meet from freshman Juan Mora - he dropped a second and a half in his 100 breast (52.49) and over three seconds in the 200 breast (1:54.53).
Delta State Christmas Invite - Part One
DSU runs a Saturday-Tuesday Christmas invite, one of the latest of the season. With two days in, some fireworks already:
Henderson State’s sprint squads are at it again. Kiara Pozvai hit the #1 D2 time in the nation thus far this year with a 22.61, just missing her 22.59 PR but locking in her national invite. The Red Wave men meanwhile hit the #2 200 free relay in the nation with Jack Armstrong (19.43)/Jase Pickney (19.64), Patryk Dabrowski (19.60), and Lamar Taylor (19:24) combining for a 1:17.91.
Armstrong put down a bevy of top times, adding to that 50 free with a 1:35.56 200 free, 46.74 100 fly, and 53.77 100 breast.
He didn’t take the win in the 100 fly though, as HSU put two men sub-47 with Pickney hitting a 46.50 for the #1 time in the country this year.
Also in the sprints, a couple barriers were broken as Delta State’s Dani Solkow cracked 23 for the first time with a 22.92, while Incarnate Word’s Fabio Fasolo saw a time in the teens for the first time with a 19.85.
Henderson State’s men also ripped a school record 1:26.66 200 medley relay, with Taylor (22.28)/Armstrong (23.99)/Pickney (20.80)/Dabrowski (19.59), while University of Montevallo brought their school record sub-1:30 for the first time with a 1:29.23 (Will Mahone 22.74/Janek Barczyk 24.51/Aleksei Kolesnikov 21.47/Juan Celis 20.51).
Delta State’s women crushed their best 400 medley relay from the 2023 season, with Jordon Kloth (56.43), Alexis Moon (1:03.54), Mikayla Kloth (54.57), and Dani Solkow (50.09) combining for a 3:44.63 that would have placed 10th at 2023 NCAAs.
Other Good Stuff
A number of dual/tri meets going on pre-Christmas break with good results:
Williams popped a few D3 nationally relevant times at the Wesleyan quad meet. Amanda Wager (2:14.07) hit the #1 200 breast, while Charlotte Wishnack (2:16.28) now sits fourth. Sophia Verkleeren went top-5 times in the backstrokes (55.35/2:00.68). Samantha Kilcoyne’s 54.84 100 fly ties her for third.
Saint Mary’s Luke Schwenk isn’t resting on his laurels from last weekend’s midseason invite. Against Washington College, he nearly matched his 50 free PR (20.34), and added a 48.61 100 back PR to boot, taking over a second off his previous best.
Connecticut College’s Justin Finkel was perhaps the biggest breakout in D3 last year. The 2023 200 fly runner-up is rounding into form this semester with a season best 1:49.04 against Roger Williams and Trinity.
🏊🏽♂️ Weekend Preview 🏊🏼
Second half of DSU Christmas Invite, plus the UNLV Invite and a dual between two of the best D2 Florida schools in Tampa and Nova Southeastern, and we’re on the Christmas training.
We’ll do a bit of first semester retrospective and prognosticating in the interim.
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