2024-25 Division I Mid-Major Power Rankings: October Edition

We recently put out our first NCAA Division I power rankings for the 2024-25 season. If you’re unfamiliar, the exercise is somewhere between a CSCAA-style dual meet rankings and a pure prediction of NCAA finish order. With what felt like an influx of men’s mid-major programs vying for a spot in the top 25 teams, it got some of us wondering—what would power rankings for the Division I mid-major teams look like?

This thought experiment gets tricky quickly, so we needed to set some ground rules. If we’re only looking at mid-major programs, many agreed that the mid-major teams we ranked wouldn’t necessarily be the teams we ranked first in a mid-majors only ranking, as the teams most likely to score at NCAAs aren’t necessarily the teams who would have the best record if these teams faced each other in dual meets. The two factors in our regular power rankings were at odds.

So, for our mid-major power rankings, we’re not playing by our usual rules; instead, we’re imagining what the top 10 would look like at a hypothetical mid-major-only championship meet with top 16 scoring.

As ever, the early season power rankings are perhaps the most difficult, since we needed to weigh past performances and incoming talent when not every team had raced a meet yet. But, without further ado, here’s how we think the 2025 Mid-Major Championships would look as of October (we’ll check back in later this season).

Women’s Power Rankings:

1. Princeton University
2. San Diego State University
3. Harvard University
4. University of Nevada-Las Vegas
5. George Washington University
6. The University of Akron
7. Rice University
8. U.S. Naval Academy
9. Yale University
10. Ohio University

The two-time defending Ivy League champions, the Princeton Tigers, seem the clear number-one pick to start the season. They’ve graduated a big piece in Margaux McDonald—who is spending her fifth year at Cal—but they return the other four swimmers who made 2024 NCAAs. They were the only women’s program to send relays to last year’s NCAA as well. In all, eight of the schools we’ve ranked in the top 10 sent at least one swimmer to the 2024 NCAA Championships, the exceptions being Navy and Yale ranked at 8th and 9th.

As simple as it was to put Princeton on top, it’s a really tight race for second between the Tigers’ conference rivals the Harvard Crimson, the San Diego State Aztecs, and the UNLV Rebels. We gave the edge to San Diego in this fight as the impact of both Alex Roberts and Christiana Williams returning for a fifth year is huge.

We have George Washington rebounding well from losing one of their NCAA qualifiers, Ava DeAngelis, and rounding out the top five as Rice and Akron battle for the sixth spot. It’s important to remember that at a mid-major championship, these teams would get more of a chance to flex their depth than they do at an NCAA Championship, meaning other swimmers will be able to help make up the gap left by a swimmer like DeAngelis for GW or McDonald for Princeton. It’s also why schools like Navy and Yale crack our top 10 despite not sending an individual swimmer to NCAAs last season.

As with all power rankings, it’s a challenge to narrow the list down to ten—other teams we considered for the last couple of spots were Brown University, Florida International University, and Miami University (Ohio).

Men’s Power Rankings:

1. Harvard University
2. Princeton University
3. U.S. Naval Academy
4. U.S. Military Academy
5. University of Nevada – Las Vegas
6. University of Hawaii
7. Yale University
8. Queens University (NC)
9. Columbia University
10. University of Denver

In a hypothetical mid-major conference championship, the battle for the top spot would likely be a closer one with Harvard, Princeton, and Navy all vying for the crown. Navy has the longest-running conference streak in the mid-majors—they’re going for their 21st straight Patriot League title. That kind of dominance would certainly translate well to a mid-major championship format. But, Harvard has their own streak going in the Ivy League and the first-year class the Crimson have brought in this year, including Apostolos Siskos, Adriano Arioti, Joshua Chen, Marre Gattnar, and Evan Croley is simply too hard to ignore.

Adding Logan Noguchi is a boost for the Princeton Tigers as well and is part of the reason that we’ve got the Tigers ranked above the Midshipmen for the time being. Meanwhile, we’ve got Navy’s rival Army ranked just behind them. Army’s got a case for dethroning Navy at the conference championships, but at a meet with schools like Harvard, Princeton, and UNLV, we think Navy would maintain their spot ahead of Army.

Like the women’s meet, sorting out the bottom half of the rankings was a challenge too. We’ve given Hawaii the edge over Yale, though the Bulldogs have a fast young squad and return Noah Millard to the roster this season.

The 10th spot was a challenge too; we’ve gone with the 10x defending Summit League champions, the University of Denver, but also considered Brown, George Washington, Delaware, and UNC-Wilmington. George Washington lost major pieces in Djurdje Matic and Toni Dragoja, but have added 2024 Summit League Male Swimmer of the Year Elliott Irwin, who helps staunch the loss and could power them into the top 10 at our hypothetical mid-major championships.