Virginia’s Gretchen Walsh and Claire Curzan set NCAA records en route to their team’s fifth consecutive NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships title.

On Saturday evening, March 22, Curzan and Walsh were joined by Gretchen’s older sister, Alex, and Anna Moesch in their final campaign. The 400-yard freestyle relay set an American record of 3:06.91, capping off the four-day championships with a dominant performance.

The 13 Virginia swimmers wore swim caps adorned with a gold Roman numeral V, symbolising their fifth consecutive title—a milestone they quickly sought and achieved. Virginia's final tally of 544 points was 16.5 more than their 2024 total and 127 points ahead of runner-up Stanford’s 417. The golden V on their caps stood for Virginia and Victory as the team claimed six individual event titles, won four relays, and set four NCAA swimming records.

A Prestigious and Competitive Championship

The NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships, held annually in March, feature 18 swimming events and three diving events contested in a short-course yards pool. The stringent qualifying standards resulted in 455 female athletes being invited to the 2025 championships, representing 69 collegiate institutions. Approximately 75 of the individual competitors hailed from foreign countries, several of whom have raced in Olympic finals against U.S. athletes.

American collegiate institutions and their head coaches actively recruit top talent worldwide. Nearly 25,000 international student-athletes compete in NCAA sports, with swimmers and divers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, and Poland comprising the top 10 nationalities represented.

Gretchen Walsh Dominates with Historic Performance

The most significant performance of the championships came from Gretchen Walsh in the 100-yard butterfly. Walsh swam 47.21 in the preliminary session before posting an astonishing 46.97 in the finals, shattering her own NCAA, American, Meet, and U.S. Open records for the second time in a day. Walsh remains the only swimmer to break the 48-second barrier—and now the only one to crack 47 seconds. Stanford’s Torri Huske, the reigning Olympic champion, finished second in 48.90. Walsh and Huske stood together on the podium at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where Huske won gold, and Walsh took silver.

Walsh also broke her record in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 44.71, handily defeating Huske, who finished in 46.01. The Virginia senior won six championship events, earning a perfect 60 points in individual races as the meet’s top scorer.

Virginia scored a dominant 50 points in the 50-yard freestyle, led by a 1-2 finish from Walsh and Curzan, with Maxine Parker adding points by placing sixth. Walsh secured three individual NCAA titles (50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, and 100-yard butterfly), while Curzan closely followed, winning the 100-yard and 200-yard backstroke and finishing second to Walsh in the 100-yard freestyle.

Curzan set a new NCAA record in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 1:46.82. Notably, she became the first swimmer to win NCAA titles for two different schools, having previously won the 200-yard backstroke as a Stanford freshman in 2023. Curzan, an Olympic silver medallist from the Tokyo 2020 Games, did not qualify for the U.S. Olympic team for Paris 2024.

Alex Walsh Makes History

Alex Walsh won the 100-yard breaststroke in 56.49, finishing ahead of Tennessee’s Mona McSharry by 0.91 seconds. McSharry, who earned an Olympic bronze medal in the 100-meter breaststroke for Ireland at Paris 2024, was among several Olympians competing at NCAAs.

The 100-yard breaststroke title marked Walsh’s fifth different individual NCAA event win, making her the second swimmer in history to achieve this feat, following Tracy Caulkins, who won six different events in the 1980s.

Alex Walsh finished second in both the 200-yard butterfly and 200-yard individual medley. She earned three gold medals and one silver in relays, bringing her total to 23 NCAA golds, including nine individual titles. Due to the COVID-19 eligibility extension, Walsh competed in five NCAA championships, becoming the first swimmer to be part of five consecutive national championship teams. Internationally, she owns a silver medal from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the 200-meter individual medley but was disqualified from the event at Paris 2024.

Other Notable Swimming Performances

Indiana’s Anna Peplowski won her first NCAA title in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:40.50, narrowly edging out USC’s Minna Abraham by 0.06 seconds. Abraham represented Hungary in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay at Paris 2024, while bronze medallist Stephanie Balducci competed on three Brazilian relays at the same Olympics.

Stanford dominated the 200-yard individual medley, scoring 53 points. Torri Huske secured the title in 1:49.67, leading a Stanford sweep of the top three places. Caroline Bricker won the 400-yard individual medley for Stanford, ahead of Florida’s Emma Weyant, a Tokyo 2020 silver and Paris 2024 bronze medallist.

Jillian Cox of Texas secured victories in the 500-yard and 1650-yard freestyle events. Stanford’s Aurora Roghair finished second in both and received the NCAA’s Elite 90 Award for academic excellence, maintaining a 4.0 GPA in Human Biology. Indiana’s Ching Gan, who represented Singapore at the Paris Olympics, finished third in the 1650.

Texas’s Emma Sticklen set a new NCAA record in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 1:49.11. Stanford’s Lucy Bell won the 200-yard breaststroke in 2:04.28, with Brigham Young’s Mackenzie Bell and Indiana’s Brearna Crawford rounding out the podium.

Diving Highlights

Texas led all teams in diving with 92 points, fuelled by standout performances from Bayleigh Crawford, Hailey Hernandez, and Alejandra Estudillo Torres, who won the 3-meter event. Estudillo Torres competed for Mexico at the 2023 Pan American Games and the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha before making her Olympic debut in Paris.

Virginia, set to discontinue its diving program after 2025, scored six points from senior Elizabeth Kaye in the 1m event. Kaye is the only All-American diver in the program's 45-year history.

Miami’s Chiara Pellicani and Mia Vallée placed first and second in the 1m springboard event. Indiana’s Skyler Liu won the platform diving event with a score of 382.15.

Virginia Dominates Relays

Virginia won four of the five relays, scoring 194 points toward its championship victory. The Cavaliers set NCAA, Meet, American, and U.S. Open records in the 200-yard medley relay, with both Walsh sisters, Curzan, and Parker clocking 1:31.1—nearly two seconds ahead of Stanford. Stanford secured the lone relay win in the 800-yard freestyle relay.

With five straight NCAA titles, Virginia has cemented itself as the dominant force in women’s collegiate swimming.