By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
Good day faculty swimming followers — welcome again for one more NCAA digest. Midseason invite season is nicely and really upon us now. This week, most of the league’s high groups are in motion throughout the nation between the Georgia Fall Invite, Texas Corridor of Fame Invite, Ohio State Fall Invite, the Wolfpack Elite GAC Invite, and the Gamecock Invite, to call a number of. And oh yeah, there’s the CSCAA Energy 4 Twin Meet Problem as nicely.
A few of these invitations have already begun (and made some main headlines already) however for simplicity’s sake, we’re going to save lots of all of this week’s midseason invite motion till subsequent week’s digest. With many groups gearing up for invitational motion, the final seven days have been a bit quieter on the twin meet entrance, however there have been nonetheless loads of headlines.
Let’s get into it.
Midseason Week One
The Energy 4 swimming invitations begin in earnest this week, however our first invitations are literally already within the books. SIU dominated its personal A3 Efficiency Invite, successful nearly all of occasions. Final 12 months’s breakout, Olivia Herron, is already off to a strong begin this 12 months. She gained the 100 breaststroke (1:00.30), 200 breaststroke (2:09.09), and 200 IM (1:58.11) on the meet in season-best efforts. She additionally helped the Salukis win a number of relays, together with the 200 medley (27.64 50 breast cut up), and 800 freestyle (1:52.94 cut up).
New CSCAA Ballot Drops
Division I
It’s establishment on the high of the November Division I CSCAA rankings because the Virginia girls and the Texas males nonetheless maintain 1st place of their respective rankings. The Cavalier girls dominated at their two twin meets final month, outscoring the Gators 224-127 and the Tar Heels 203-90. The Texas girls maintained their maintain on second place after choosing up two twin meet wins final month as nicely (versus Alabama and Tennessee). Courtesy of a 4-0 begin, the Louisville Cardinals have moved up from seventh to third, bumping the Stanford Cardinal to 4th by 17 factors. There’s a 30-point hole between Stanford and the fifth place NC State Wolfpack.
Notably, LSU rose from twenty first to eleventh after an 8-0 begin to the season, whereas the 4-0 South Carolina girls solely moved as much as seventeenth after a few historic twin meet wins final month.
Hubert Kos, one of many Longhorn’s greatest stars, has but to race in an official NCAA meet this season however that’s no drawback for Texas, which earned a pair of straightforward wins towards Alabama and Tennessee to keep up its maintain on the highest spot within the ballot. 4 Texas swimmers are presently ranked high three within the nation in at the least two occasions to this point this season.
However behind Texas’ grip on the highest spot there have been some shake ups. Arizona State is on a tear this fall, propelling them forward of Indiana for the 2nd spot. Indiana sits third and Florida maintained its 4th place rank, however the Louisville males matched the Cardinal girls and moved from twelfth to fifth following wins towards Tennessee, Auburn, Kentucky, and Notre Dame within the final month. Louisville was the one staff to interrupt into the highest 10 for the primary time this season within the males’s rankings, whereas Arizona and Northwestern moved into the highest 25 after being unranked to begin the season.
Division II
It’s a tight race on the high of the Division II males’s CSCAA standings, with Drury holding the #1 spot over Tampa by a single vote. Drury has not raced any twin meets since final month however did win the Drury Invite and completed fourth of 5 groups on the SMU Basic. Drury and Tampa appear set for one more shut race on the NCAA Championships; final 12 months, Drury got here out on high earlier than their title was vacated attributable to a constructive take a look at for elevated ranges of caffeine.
The highest 4 groups stay the identical from final month with Indianapolis and Grand Valley following behind Drury and Tampa. However on the ladies’s facet, the three-time defending NCAA DII champions Nova Southeastern have jumped from fourth to first. The Sharks beat the Tampa girls by simply 5 factors to kick off the month and now sit 8-2 in twin meets, possible a significant factor in why they took the highest spot within the November rating by simply two votes. There’s a detailed race on for third as nicely—Drury holds that rating by only a level over Grand Valley, which maintained its 4th place spot. Colorado Mesa is fifth, simply two factors behind Drury and the entire high 5 is separated by simply 27 votes.
Division III
Emory sits atop the ladies’s and males’s Division III rankings for November. It’s a transfer up for each groups; the ladies have been third final month and the boys have been second. After beating Division I opponent Queens (NC) and Sewanee, the Emory girls have moved to 2-1 on the season. NYU dropped to second by 11 factors after holding the highest spot in October. They’re adopted by Kenyon, which has a 4-2 file, then Denison, and defending NCAA champions MIT spherical out the highest 5.
In the meantime, whereas the Emory males dropped their meets towards Queens (NC) and Georgia Tech, however nonetheless moved as much as first within the males’s rankings. There was way more motion on this month’s males’s rankings than the ladies’s. Each Emory and Chicago leapfrogged October’s first ranked staff, defending NCAA champions Denison. Behind them, Carnegie Mellon broke into the highest 5 groups at 4th whereas Kenyon stayed fifth. Additional down the standings, Pomona-Pitzer jumped from nineteenth to ninth), and 5 new groups have been on the rankings after being unranked final month.
NCAA Reaches Settlement With Volunteer Coaches
The NCAA has agreed to pay $303 million over three years to settle a category motion lawsuit introduced by volunteer coaches. The lawsuit, which represents 7,700 volunteer NCAA coaches alleges the league engaged in unlawful wage fixing beneath a job that prohibited colleges from paying them. The settlement continues to be pending court docket approval however in response to ESPN, every coach will obtain an approximate $39,200 earlier than bills and costs, although college, sport, and years labored will all issue into a person’s compensation.
The category contains any volunteer coach who labored for a Division I athletic program apart from baseball at any level from March 17, 2019 to June 20, 2023. Coaches who match that description can go to ncaavolunteercoachlawsuit.com for updates on the case.
Fast Hits
Ryan Martines has been employed as head coach of the newly reinstated Concordia College Irvine’s girls’s swimming and diving staff. In mid-August, 9 feminine scholar athletes filed a intercourse discrimination class motion lawsuit towards the college after it eradicated 4 athletic packages. Final month, a California decide issued an order barring CUI from eliminating the ladies’s swim staff (and all girls’s varsity groups) “all through this case or till additional order of this court docket.”
The CSCAA has revealed the bracket for its inaugural Twin Meet Problem. The 4 taking part groups—Virginia, Michigan, Tennessee, and Arizona State—have been seeded right into a four-team double elimination bracket primarily based on their relative CSCAA rankings.
After a robust summer time in long-course, Jack Wilkening raced for Michigan for the primary time this season. Wilkening missed Michigan’s earlier meets attributable to undisclosed medical causes. In his season debut, he gained the 100 backstroke (48.29) and led off Michigan’s successful 200 medley relay (21.77 again) as Michigan beat Oakland and Pitt.
Ivy League motion stayed crimson sizzling this previous week because the Princeton males broke three college information, the Yale males broke 5 Columbia pool information of their win over the Lions final weekend, and the Harvard vs. Dartmouth twin noticed 9 pool information damaged throughout the ladies’s and males’s meets. The Harvard girls improved to a 3-0 Ivy League file and jumped forward of Princeton for the highest spot within the girls’s Ivy League Twin Meet Showdown standings. The Princeton males are additionally 3-0 and held onto 1st place forward of a tie for second between Harvard and Yale.
Learn the complete story on SwimSwam: 2025-26 NCAA Digest: It’s Time For Midseason Invitations
