2024 Women's NCAAs: How Did Our Top 20 Recruits Perform As Freshmen? (original) (raw)

Bella Sims led an impressive group of Florida freshmen who played a crucial role in propelling the Gators to a 3rd-place finish in the team race. Archive photo via Jack Spitser/Spitser Photography

We’ve already done a deep dive into our recruiting archives, looking at how the top 20 recruits from the high school class of 2020 did after four NCAA seasons. Now it’s time to look back at a more recent recruit ranking: the current year’s freshmen:

Relevant links:

• Way-Too-Early Sophomore Ranks, Class of 2023 Girls
• Junior Ranks, Class of 2023 Girls
• Senior Re-Ranks, Class of 2023 Girls

Naturally, this analysis has a far smaller sample size than the lookback of how the class of 2020 fared over their entire career, so it’s much more difficult to read too much into these numbers. Still, it’s useful to look at which first-year NCAA swimmers had the best performances relative to their recruiting ranks.

As always, our notes on this data:

• The data included is only individual scoring at NCAAs. That’s not an exact measure of an athlete’s contribution to a program: many of these swimmers (and others not listed) were relay scorers at NCAAs, scored significant points at conference meets and provided great leadership and culture-building for their programs. This data isn’t a perfect analysis of the best recruits – it’s merely a quick look at the data we can compile.
• A college swimming career includes four years of eligibility, and sometimes more. Revisiting scoring after one year is an incomplete analysis of a swimmer’s career – this is not the final word on any of these prospects, and we will revisit this data over the next three seasons to get a more complete evaluation.

The ranks listed below are from our re-rank last summer – they are not current ranks of NCAA athletes. We also do not rank international athletes as recruits, as it’s hard to predict if and when they’ll come to the U.S., and which class with which to include them.

TOP 20 RANKED RECRUITS

HM=Honorable mention

The Hits:

• Bella Sims was a no-brainer at #1 and performed incredibly in her freshman season, winning the 200 free and 500 free and coming 3rd in a tightly-contested 200 back. She also provided crucial relay splits for Florida, including leading the Gators to their first 800 free relay title since 1989.
• Ranked 11th last year, **Caroline Bricker**‘s emergence was a big story throughout the season at Stanford, and she performed when the stakes were highest with a 4th-place finish and a new best time in the 400 IM at NCAAs. Bricker also placed 10th in the 200 IM.
• Behind Sims, our next three ranked recruits scored 14 or 15 points, not including #3 Kiley Wilhelm who took an Olympic redshirt season. Texas’ Campbell Stoll made a pair of consolation finals, setting lifetime bests in both the 200 fly and 400 IM final, while the Virginia duo of Cavan Gormsen and Tess Howley both had one big result, as Gormsen placed 5th in the 500 free and Howley was 4th in the 200 fly.
• Freestylers Erin Gemmell and Camille Spink managed to put up points in competitive events loaded with upperclassmen, and Spink missed out on at least 11 additional points in the 200 free after being disqualified for a false start in the ‘A’ final. Spink touched 6th before the DQ, which would’ve earned 13 points.
• Backstrokers Berit Berglund and JoJo Ramey were the top scorers among swimmers ranked behind Bricker, with Berglund topping the 100 back consolation final and Ramey touching 3rd in the ‘B’ final of the 200 back.

The Misses:

With three more seasons of eligibility, there are no real misses, but we’re simply looking at swimmers who may have not performed as expected as freshmen.

• The top-ranked recruit who didn’t score was Stanford’s Lucy Thomas, who had a so-so season by her standards and didn’t take down any of her key best times. Thomas only made one ‘A’ final at Pac-12s and her highest NCAA finish was 29th, both coming in the 100 breast.
• Asia Kozan and Grace Rainey were the only ranked recruits who didn’t earn invites, both falling short of lowering their best times during the season.
• Among the non-scorers, Kathryn Hazle deserves mention after coming close in the 400 IM, placing 17th and missing a second swim (or swim-off) by 12 one-hundredths.
• Top 20 swimmers Miriam Sheehan and Julia Podkoscielny had strong seasons but didn’t hit their tapers right on at NCAAs, while Hailey Tierney didn’t score but was solid in her national championship debut with a 21st-place finish in the 50 free with a season-best and a new PB in the 100 fly.

UNRANKED RECRUITS

And of course, we’ll include which unranked recruits earned NCAA invites and scored points this season – both domestic up-and-comers and international pickups.

DOMESTIC:

• Florida’s Catie Choate had a breakout swim in the 200 back at the Georgia Fall Invitational, and essentially matched that time in the NCAA prelims to lock in a berth in the ‘A’ final. Coming into the season with a PB of 1:54.9, she’s now been sub-1:52 multiple times.
• Texas’ Angie Coe had a monstrous drop in the 400 IM at the Sterkel Classic in February, bringing her best time down some sevens seconds in 4:07.45. After making the ‘B’ final, she reset her PB down to 4:06.32 to place 13th in her NCAA debut.
• Duke’s Ali Pfaff was on fire at NCAAs, setting best times in all three of her events. That included qualifying for the consols of the 200 back in 13th, touching in 1:52.41 after hitting a PB of 1:53.48 in November at the NC State Invite.
• Choate, Coe and Pfaff were all featured in the “Best of the Rest” section in our class of 2023 re-rank.

INTERNATIONAL:

• Miranda Grana swam faster at SECs than she did at NCAAs for Texas A&M, but still performed incredibly well for a freshman with a 6th-place finish in the 200 back and an 8th-place showing in the 100 back. At SECs, the Mexican native was 3rd in the 100 back, 200 back and 100 fly.
• A Swedish Olympian, Emelie Fast came in and proved to be a key contributor for Tennessee and a future replacement for Mona McSharry, as she made the podium (top three) of both breaststroke events at SECs and then followed up by going faster at NCAAs, placing 7th in the 200 breast and 9th in the 100 breast. Fast also scored in the 200 IM at SECs, placing 11th.
• Minna Abraham was a big early-season story with her 200 free swims for USC, and the Hungarian kept the ball rolling through the postseason. She set a PB of 1:41.38 in the 200 free at the Texas Invite, and then swept the 100 and 200 free at Pac-12s coming off competing at the 2024 World Championships. In her first NCAA Championships, Abraham was back under 1:42 in the 200 free final for 3rd, and although she was off in the heats of the 100 free, she delivered a pair of 46-point relay splits for the Trojans.
• One of the top freestyle sprinters in Brazil, Stephanie Balduccini was a driving force behind Michigan’s performance this season, particularly in the relays. Individually, she finished in the top five of the 100 free, 200 free and 200 IM at Big Tens, and followed up by placing 9th in the 100 free and 11th in the 200 free at NCAAs, setting new best times in both.

DIVING:

• Sweden’s Elna Widerstrom was one of three athletes to score for Minnesota, putting up 13 points with a 6th-place finish on 1-meter, helping place the Golden Gophers 20th in the team standings.
• Widerstrom finished one spot ahead of Florida’s Camyla Monroy in the 1-meter event, as Monroy tallied 12 points for the Gators.
• Juniors and seniors were fairly dominant in the diving events this season, but three more first-years managed to score: Sweden’s Emilia Nilsson Garip on 1-meter, Finland’s Lauren Hallaselka on 3-meter, and China’s Shiyun Lai in both springboard events.

ARCHIVES: REVISITING RECRUIT RANKS

In This Story

• Bella Sims

Bella Sims

• Erin Gemmell

Erin Gemmell

About James Sutherland

James Sutherland

James swam five years at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, specializing in the 200 free, back and IM. He finished up his collegiate swimming career in 2018, graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics. In 2019 he completed his graduate degree in sports journalism. Prior to going to Laurentian, James swam …

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