Following a record-breaking showing at the Big Ten championships, the Wildcats qualified eight swimmers to the NCAA championship meet where the team had their best showing in “over a decade,” coach Jimmy Tierney said.
This year’s championships, held March 20-22 in Columbus, Ohio, were more difficult to qualify for than they have been in the past because of increasingly fast times from college swimmers across the nation.
Swimmers with “A” qualifying times automatically make the meet, with any additional spots going to “B” qualifying times. This year, only 10 “B” cut qualifying times made it to the meet.
“To bump our numbers up to eight this year from what we’ve had in the past couple of years shows tremendous improvement,” Tierney said. “Only 12 teams in the country qualified more athletes, so we were very pleased with how many girls competed at such a high level.”
The team’s two senior captains, Andrea Hupman and Katie Braun, were two of the eight who competed at the NCAAs. They were accompanied by sophomores Kassia Shishkoff, Emily Wong and Genny Szymanski, and freshmen Ellen Grigg, Teisha Lightbourne and Liza Engstrom.
The Cats kicked off the meet with a 16th place swim in the 200-meter freestyle relay of Hupman, Lightbourne, Engstrom and Wong, earning honorable mention All-American honors. Shortly after, Grigg stepped it up in the 500-meter freestyle and broke her own school record that she recently set at Big Tens by more than two seconds. She finished in eighth place and earned All-American honors – NU’s first since 2002.
“I thought I had a really good Big Tens meet, but I didn’t think that I would go much faster at NCAAs,” Grigg said. “I almost didn’t believe it when I did it.”
More records fell the second day of competition. The 800-meter freestyle relay of Grigg, Wong, Hupman and Shishkoff beat the school record set at Big Tens by almost five seconds. The women finished 10th overall, good enough to be named honorable mention All-Americans.
Braun also broke her own school record in the 100-meter butterfly and finished 23rd overall.
“I got my best time and broke the team record, and you can’t really ask for anything else when you’re racing,” Braun said.
On the final day of the meet, NU swimmers won two more honorable mention All-American honors. The 400-meter freestyle relay of Hupman, Wong, Lightbourne and Shishkoff finished 14th overall, and Hupman took 12th overall in the 100-meter freestyle.
Hupman finished strong with one All-American honor and five honorable mention All-American honors, which was the biggest haul for any NU swimmer since 2000. The Cats earned a combined 16 All-American awards.
With the difficulty of reaching the meet, the performance created a good place for Hupman and Braun to complete their NU careers.
“It’s kind of indescribable for me,” Braun said, “because the whole experience is bittersweet, knowing that this was going to be my last meet ever, and having all the accomplishments of the team behind us.”
Because of the number of girls returning from this year’s NCAA squad, the future looks promising for the Cats.
“We had three freshmen (at NCAAs) this year, and we’ll definitely have more coming in,” Grigg said. “I feel like this is a really good starting point for us as a freshman class. I feel like we’re going to keep getting better and better.”
