Swimming

2024 NCAA Invite Times Get Slower in 5 Women’s Swimming Events

By

on

By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

2024 WOMEN’S NCAA SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

With last week’s release of the invites for the 2024 NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships, we can get a more-holistic picture of where collegiate swimming is going in terms of speed.

In a rather-unusual outcome, 5 out of 13 events on the women’s schedule had slower invite times in 2024 than they did in 2023, and very few events were significantly-faster.

Two events were quite a bit slower: in the 1650 free, the invite time got 1.09 seconds slower, and in the 200 back, the invite time got .77 seconds slower.

The times getting slower in the 500 and 1650 freestyles were the biggest surprise on this list. The women’s distance freestyles have been in a trough the last few seasons in the NCAA, with winning times coming in slower than the Ledecky-era.

Anecdotally, the expectation was that the trend in these events was changing in the 2023-2024 season. That perception was driven by things like 7 swimmers already this season faster in the 500 free than the 4:36.62 that won last year (Bella Sims, Rachel Stege, Emma Weyant, Lindsay Looney, Dune Coetzee, and Aimee Canny).

But, as is often the case, what’s happening at the top can skew what’s happening in the next tiers of the sport. The distance races were still getting way faster overall the last few years, even if the times at the top weren’t reflective of that. And this year, while the top-end has gotten much faster, the next level of of NCAA swimmers have normalized a bit.

Women’s NCAA Invited Times Through the Years

EVENT (SCY) 2020 INVITE TIME 2021 INVITE TIME 2022 INVITE TIME 2023 INVITE TIME
2024 INVITE TIME
 Change
50 free 22.21 22.32 22.16 22.15 22.11 -0.04
100 free 48.51 48.76 48.44 48.37 48.34 -0.03
200 free 1:45.23 1:46.25 1:45.42 1:45.31 1:44.80 -0.51
500 free 4:41.20 4:44.77 4:43.08 4:41.09 4:41.19 +0.10
1650 free 16:17.45 16:25.47 16:16.47 16:13.73 16:14.82 +1.09
100 fly 52.34 52.7 52.35 52.2 51.88 -0.32
200 fly 1:56.06 1:57.42 1:56.14 1:55.92 1:55.88 -0.04
100 back 52.73 53.01 52.46 52.36 52.28 -0.08
200 back 1:53.99 1:55.05 1:53.97 1:53.34 1:54.01 +0.77
100 breast 59.98 1:00.12 59.87 59.73 59.75 +0.02
200 breast 2:10.12 2:10.37 2:09.15 2:09.68 2:09.55 -0.13
200 IM 1:57.31 1:57.62 1:56.85 1:56.90 1:57.03 +0.13
400 IM 4:10.39 4:13.19 4:11.60 4:11.36 4:10.74 -0.62

Note above the anomaly in 2021, where many teams didn’t compete in the college season and when those who did had truncated or interrupted years. It’s also worth addressing that while the 2020 NCAA Championships never happened, invites were made, so we still have the comparable data.

So what does this all mean? Aside from anomalies like the COVID year, it’s very unusual for invite times to get slower from year-to-year, especially in 5 events.

We could blame it on redshirts from the Olympic year – but we didn’t see that trend in 2016 or 2020.

While the sport seems to have been on a runaway train of improvement in the last few years, especially at the age group level, at some point that train was going to stop. Again, the perception though was that more swimmers were swimming faster in-season, which in general should lead to faster NCAA Championship qualifying times.

Have we begun approaching the limit of the sport? Or is this just a one year *blip* that will return to its normal trajectory next season?

 

 

SwimSwam: 2024 NCAA Invite Times Get Slower in 5 Women’s Swimming Events

Related Items

You must be logged in to post a comment Login