Louisville Women Returning 279 Out of 288 Points from 2023 NCAAs for 2023-2024 Season (original) (raw)

The Louisville women’s team will be returning 279 out of the 288 points that they scored at the 2023 NCAA Championships for the 2023-2024 season.

The 2023 NCAA team had a total of 11 individual swimmers and two individual diving qualifiers. That made them the smallest roster out of the top six finishing teams.

Ten out of the 11 NCAA individual swimmers will be returning for this upcoming season as Liberty Williams (who scored nine individual points) entered the transfer portal and is headed to Alabama.

Seniors Christiana Regenauer and Abby Hay have both already announced their returns as they will be using their COVID-19 fifth years of eligibility. Hay and Regenauer combined to score a total of 58 individual points.

The Louisville women also scored in all five NCAA relays, finishing in the top eight in all but the 800 free relay. All 20 of their relay legs will be returning as Hay was a member of two relays and Regenauer was a member of four.

The Louisville women tied a program best fourth-place finish, but their 288 total points were the most in school history. The program has finished in the top 10 seven of the last eight NCAA Championships (they were 13th in 2021). The team also had another “first” as they had two swimmers in the 50 free A final at NCAAs with Regenauer and rising senior Gabi Albiero.

The program will bring in five new women this fall including Lucy Mehraban (sprint free), Zoe Vogelman (IM), Bianca Costea (sprint free), Summer Cardwell (mid-distance free), and Samm Helmboldt (diver). Cardwell was a member of the “Best-of-the-rest” when the class of 2023 was ranked back in May 2022. Both Vogelman and Costea are international swimmers.

This is the second year in a row in which the fourth place team returns most of their NCAA points as the Alabama women returned all 288 of their points (and relay legs) for this past season.

Based on SwimSwam’s fifth year tracker, at least 36 women have announced they will be using their COVID-19 fifth year of eligibility. This past season, our tracker had a total of 48 women by the end of the summer.