Women’s swimming

Final morning session is done and the Spiders are looking solid. Wieczorek and Weldon are sitting 2nd and 3rd in the 200 back, while the Spiders have a whopping four in the championship final of the 100 free with Baber in 1st (second-fastest in school history behind Nwakalor last year), Krichev in 3rd, Amare in 4th, and Hughes tied for 6th. Primiano sits 2nd in the 200 breast, and 200 fly is the weak spot with Smith in 10th as our top morning finisher and the only Spider to make it back in that event.

Extrapolated scores for the day so far based on prelim placings:

UR: 121.5
Duquesne: 114
La Salle: 96
GW: 79
Fordham: 60
Mason: 36
Rhode Island: 36
Bona: 32
SLU: 27.5
Davidson: 18

This does not include anything from the mile, which is contested as a timed final. All but the fastest heat swim around mid-afternoon, and then the fastest seeded heat swims at the beginning of finals tonight. GW has the top two seeds in the event, so while the Spiders will have some scorers, GW will make up some ground there. Duquesne and UR may end up with similar point totals for that event.

GW may make up a little bit more in the 1-meter diving as they have entries ranked 7th, 12th, and 13th coming in. The Spiders are just looking to get one or two into scoring position, but are unlikely to score a lot of points. Spiders are ranked 16th, 17th, and 27th coming in. Duquesne is in a similar boat as UR, with their divers ranked 20th, 24th, and 25th. They actually elected to bring 6 divers (divers count as 1/3 of a swimmer toward the allowable number of athletes for the meet, so you typically bring a multiple of 3), but their other three are ranked 33rd, 35th, and 38th.

And last but not least is the 400 free relay, and based on the Spiders' outstanding performance in the 100 free this morning, you have to think they're the favorites, but you never know.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about the Spiders' chances to win this. It's by no means a lock, but they're in the driver's seat.
 
The Spiders are only going to get 1 point out of today's diving event, and it looks like GW will pick up around 35 and Duquesne around 16 on the Spiders there.

Better news out of the mile, where with only the top-seeded heat of 8 remaining to swim tonight, the Spiders took 3 of the top 4 spots so far, so they'll finish no worse than 9th-10th-12th once all swims are completed, and potentially a good bit higher. We also have the 7th seed tonight who should add some more points. GW has the top two seeds but no other scorers, so they might pick up 4–5 points on us in this event. Duquesne only has a single potential scorer with the 4th seed in the final heat, so we'll pick up at least 15 points on them thanks to our depth.

Long story short, the math right now estimates us as up by around 20 points on GW and around 40 on Duquesne heading into the final relay. If that's the case, just make sure not to get DQ'd on a false start and finish somewhere in the top 5, which shouldn't be an issue with our freestyle quality. That said, it doesn't take a whole lot of shifts up or down in finals performances to change the math, so it's by no means a lock. But I do like our chances as things stand.
 
GW runs away with the 1–2 finish in the mile, but the Spiders counter with depth, taking 4th, 5th, 6th, and 12th to actually outscore GW 47–37 in the event. Duquesne only gets 7th.

UR: 446
GW: 413.5
Duquesne: 367.5
 
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GW outperforms expectations by a bit in the 200 back, but the Spiders still add 6 points to their lead as Wieczorek takes 3rd and Weldon takes 5th.

UR: 476
GW: 437.5
Duquesne: 401.5
 
Baber gets the win in the 100 free as the Spiders take 1st, 5th, 6th, and 7th. GW gets 3rd and 8th. GW again outperforms expectations slightly, but we still expanded the lead nicely. We did well enough in the mile that we can afford GW improvements in a few other events. Could be in the range of a 25-point lead for the Spiders heading into final relay, but still a ways to go.

UR: 535
GW: 475.5
Duquesne: 408.5
 
La Salle swimmer wins the 200 breast out of lane 1, but Primiano had a great back half to grab an important 2nd place finish for the Spiders. Things still going to plan for the Spiders to hold on.

UR: 554
GW: 485.5
Duquesne: 434.5
 
GW overperforms by a few points yet again in the 200 fly, but they're still down by ~55. Hopefully their diving gains are limited to ~35 points and we'll have a 20-point cushion for the final relay.

UR: 559
GW: 503.5
Duquesne: 471.5

It'll be about an hour until the final relay as there are some awards and the championship final of diving next.
 
GW gets 35 points in diving to the Spiders' 1. The lead is 21.5 heading into the final relay.

With only 10 women's teams, the relay scoring is 40-34-32-30-28-26-24-22-18-14. Even if GW wins this, UR only needs to do no worse than 8th. AND DO NOT GET DQ'D.

UR: 560
GW: 538.5
Duquesne: 486.5
 
Congrats ladies! We discuss Chemotti and Roussell as being a cut above the rest in terms of coaches at UR but one can certainly make an argument to add Matt Barany to that conversation as well. 13 A10 championships under his tenure here. None since 2021 but with the lack of facilities, resources, and scholarships that he’s had that have only decreased, it’s very impressive what he has been able to accomplish and make us competitive each year.

Thanks SF for the updates too.
 
Is there a team regional or national NCAA swim & dive tournament? I’ve seen UVA be national champions in swim and dive so I’m not sure how it’s determined. We’ve won the A10 swim and dive championships a lot but I hadn’t seen us compete in anything beyond the conference title. There are individual NCAA championships for swim but I never see anything for the team.
 
Swimmers qualify individually for NCAAs by time rankings, but based on those qualifications, team points are also scored. A team may only send a total of 18 swimmers and divers, so there will be really good teams like the UVA women where swimmers who would otherwise have gotten into NCAAs based on their times will need to be left home. Very few teams have that much depth though. UVA has won five women's titles in a row and will undoubtedly win it again this year.

Nwakalor last year was the first Spider in a number of years to earn a spot at NCAAs.

There is a new selection rule in place this year where conference meet champions who meet certain time standards can earn guaranteed entries to NCAAs. There are only a small handful of A-10 swimmers who achieved it...I believe Topolewski from GW in the mile was the only one the women's side and I think there were four on the men's side.

In the past few years, a new National Invitational Championship has been added (not an NCAA-run event) that is kind of like an NIT for swimming. If you meet the NIC qualifying times but don't make NCAAs, you can swim in the meet, and the Spiders usually send some swimmers and a few relays to that. (The meet is sponsored by the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association, and Barany serves on the executive board while his wife is the executive director, so the Spiders have a tight relationship with events sponsored by the CSCAA.)
 
On side note, I was really happy to see local swimmer and family friend, Molly Blanchard, transfer in to UR over break. And it looks like that mid season transfer has proven to be an important Championship move by Barany.

Molly transferred from Tennessee with 1.5 years of eligibility left. While she hasn’t quite found her form from her HS days she’s still very fast and a great contributor for UR.

She finished with 24 individual points but more importantly in the 200 IM she made the Championship final, finishing 6th, but also knocked a GW swimmer into the Consolation final in 9th place instead in of 8th. She ultimately finished 11th.

Without Molly’s 24 point and pushing the GW swimmer into the Consolation final, another 5 point swing UR would have netted 31 less points vs GW and flipping the margin of victory from 27.5 points to likely a 3.5 point loss.
 
Yep, Molly was a key contributor. Very rare for the Spiders to get a mid-year addition, so very glad to have her!
 
Said it before, will say it again, and will continue to say it until I am blue in the face:

We are one of the wealthiest universities in the country (per capita endowment funds). There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to not fund all of our sports at the NCAA scholarship maximum. NO FREAKING EXCUSE!

Sometimes I hate our freaking old, out-of-touch Board of Trustees. Nothing would promote our university more on a national level than an absolutely kick-ass athletic program that dominates the A-10.

And I'm not talking about admitting unqualified jocks. I'm talking about freeing up more money so we can recruit more of the type of academically-capable athletes we already have.
 
I certainly think we should be at least matching the top programs in our conference, otherwise we're trying to compete with one hand tied behind our backs.

I don't know how much uncertainty the House setttlement has introduced. Whereas before we knew the women's swim and dive scholarship cap was 14, now it's just a roster cap of 30 and however much scholarship money you want to throw at those 30. There's no way anybody in the A-10 is giving 30, but has anybody gone above 14 yet? Is there an agreed-upon limit imposed by the A-10 that we don't know about?

And in this age of NIL, you have to wonder if it's better to invest scholarship plus NIL in a smaller number of athletes than scholarships for a larger number? Not saying this is in any way happening, but would it be better to give 16 swim scholarships or give 8 full scholarships and then also give those same 8 NIL packages of an additional $90k each? Same cost to the university, but I bet you could attract some pretty high-quality recruits with that kind of NIL. I don't know the answers, but have to imagine some programs out there will experiment.

But yes, we darn well should be at or very close to the old max of 14 scholarships like some of the other committed programs in our conference, and unless something has changed recently, we're not close to that.
 
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