Virginia Women’s Swimming & Diving Set For NCAA Championships

Virginia is a national title contender.
Virginia won the ACC Championship last month. ~ Promotional Photo courtesy Virginia Athletics Media Relations

When the college sports world shut down last March at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the Virginia women’s swimming and diving team watched its chance at program history end in an instant. The Cavaliers had secured their then 16th ACC title and believed they had a chance at a top 5 finish and possibly the program’s first National Championship.

Fast forward a year and a similar stage is set. The Hoos won their 17th ACC Championship late last month and have arrived at NCAA Championship week at long last. The battle for the national title runs from March 17-20 in Greensboro, N.C. UVA is considered a top contender, and by many observers as the favorite, for the National Championship. That would place the program in great company with the 27 other title winners in school history.

“I think that it being cancelled last year has definitely motivated them this entire year,” Virginia coach Todd DeSorbo said. “It’s motivated them to be disciplined and committed to COVID protocols and mask wearing and social distancing and everything that goes along with that to make sure that they stay healthy through the competition, but it’s also motivated them to train hard, work hard, be good teammates, knowing that it’s a year in waiting, right? This meet is a year in the making where they had a chance to potentially win a national title last year and we’re not necessarily dwelling on winning a national title, but we had a chance last year to have the highest finish in UVA history and that was taken away. Now this year, they’ve got it again. It just so happens that they’re national title contenders as well, which makes it all the more exciting. It’s definitely driven them through the last year.”

The Cavaliers’ highest finish at the national meet to date is fifth place, which was their landing spot in 2015 and 2016. The squad has high hopes of beating that spot thanks to a deep and talented roster. They’ll send 14 swimmers to the championship meet along with three divers. The 14 swimmers are tied for the third most qualifiers behind Florida (16) and Tennessee (15).

Sophomore Lexi Cuomo, sophomore Maddie Donohoe, sophomore Kate Douglass, senior Caroline Gmelich, freshman Abby Harter, freshman Anna Keating, senior Paige Madden, junior Julia Menkhaus, junior Jessica Nava, sophomore Ella Nelson, freshman Reilly Tiltmann, senior Kyla Valls, freshman Alex Walsh, and junior Alexis Wenger represent the swimmers, while sophomore Jennifer Bell, sophomore Charlotte Bowen, and senior Joceyln Porter represent the divers.

When you sift through the psych sheet times and score projections, it’s easy to see that UVA’s contingent includes three of the top 10 projected individual scorers as well as the top relay scoring projection. Madden, the Most Valuable Swimmer at the ACC meet the past two seasons, and Douglass are projected to be the top two individual scorers based on the psych sheet times.

There’s no shying away from the possibilities within the program with DeSorbo saying that it’s a daily topic among the student-athletes and that the team has been on a mission since the end of the conference meet to get to Greensboro and compete. He’s tried to steer the focus to the small steps within the coming days.

“Just like ACCs, we just want to be better than we’ve ever been, than Virginia’s ever been,” DeSorbo said. “So we talked a little bit about – I kind of shared with them that I personally have a problem of moving on to the next thing really quickly and not looking back very often, but when we do look back we look back and see how far we’ve come. The best UVA’s ever finished in NCAAs is fifth. We’ve never won a relay at NCAAs. We look back two years ago … I think our top finish in a relay was eighth place. We talked about how many A finalists we had, how many B finalists we had, how many points we scored. We just talked about again trying to outdo what we did two years ago and just being overall better as a team and if that wins us a national title, it wins us a national title and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t but I’ve got to say I believe we’ll be better than a top 5 finish, which is again the best Virginia has ever done.”

The Cavaliers scored 188 points in the 2019 meet. The projections for this year’s championships would push them past that total within the relays alone. With varying protocols, meets, and competitions in place for teams around the country, making comparisons is hard. Still, the team enters the meet with the top relay times in the 200-yard freestyle, the 400 freestyle, the 800 freestyle, the 200 medley relay, and the 400 medley relay.

The 200 medley relay set an American record at the ACC meet with a time of 1:32.93. Gmelich led off in the backstroke with Winger’s breaststroke leg, Cuomo’s butterfly leg, and Douglass’ freestyle leg wrapping it up. The 800 freestyle relay won with an ACC meet record time of 6:54.13 with Valls, Walsh, Madden, and Nelson handling the four legs.

On the individual front, swimmers are similarly positioned. Madden, who won five gold medals at the ACC Championships, enters the NCAA meet with the top times in the 200-, 500-, and 1,650 freestyle events. Douglass enters with the top times in the 50 and 100 freestyle events as well as the second best time in the 100 butterfly. Walsh enters with the top time in the 200 individual medley and the eighth best time in the 200 breaststroke.

Nelson is second in the 400 individual medley, fifth in the 200 breaststroke, and sixth in the 200 individual medley. Winger is third in the 100 breaststroke. Cuomo is fourth in the 100 butterfly. Harter is eighth in the 200 butterfly. On the diving side, Porter has qualified in all three diving events.

Much like the ACC Championship run last month that began with the American record swim by the 200 medley group, the Hoos hope to get things off to a good start at the national meet. The 800 freestyle relay kicks things off Wednesday.

DeSorbo said the 200 medley relay team’s approach at ACCs is a good guide for the potentially pressure-packed week ahead.

“I think that we really just talk about trying to have fun and staying loose and not forcing things,” he said. “At ACCs, the very first event was the 200 medley relay and a year ago, our girls had a big goal of trying to break the NCAA record a year ago in that relay and they got to ACCs, they won the event, but they didn’t swim a time nearly as fast as they wanted to and they forced it. They almost tried too hard. Before the relay this year at ACCs, the four girls in the relay were warming up, and I leaned down and I talked to them and was like ‘You need to relax, have fun, and let it happen.’ Records like that, great things, they occur when you let it happen and you don’t force it and stay relaxed. They were all like ‘yeah OK, what the heck, we’ll just let it rip.’ They were pretty relaxed. I don’t think they were expecting to break that record, I don’t think they were really gunning to break that record, they were like let’s just win this race and get the meet started off really well. I shared that story with the rest of the team. You can’t force it. You’ve just got to go and let your training take over. Don’t worry about what’s going on around you and just do your thing. As bad as you want to win an individual race, as bad as you want to win a relay, as bad as you want to win this thing overall, you can’t force it. You’ve just got to let it happen.”