2025 Women’s NCAAs: How Did Our Top 20 Recruits Perform As Freshmen?

We’ve already done a deep dive into our recruiting archives, looking at how the top 20 recruits from the high school class of 2021 did after four NCAA seasons. Now it’s time to look back at a more recent recruit ranking: the current year’s freshmen:

Relevant links:

• Way-Too-Early Sophomore Ranks, Class of 2024 Girls
• Junior Ranks, Class of 2024 Girls
• Senior Re-Ranks, Class of 2024 Girls

Naturally, this analysis has a far smaller sample size than the lookback of how the class of 2021 fared over their entire career, so it’s much more difficult to read too much into these numbers. Still, it’s useful to look at which first-year NCAA swimmers had the best performances relative to their recruiting ranks.

As always, our notes on this data:

• The data included is only individual scoring at NCAAs. That’s not an exact measure of an athlete’s contribution to a program: many of these swimmers (and others not listed) were relay scorers at NCAAs, scored significant points at conference meets and provided great leadership and culture-building for their programs. This data isn’t a perfect analysis of the best recruits – it’s merely a quick look at the data we can compile.
• A college swimming career includes four years of eligibility, and sometimes more. Revisiting scoring after one year is an incomplete analysis of a swimmer’s career – this is not the final word on any of these prospects, and we will revisit this data over the next three seasons to get a more complete evaluation.

The ranks listed below are from our re-rank last summer – they are not current ranks of NCAA athletes. We also do not rank international athletes as recruits, as it’s hard to predict if and when they’ll come to the U.S., and which class with which to include them.

TOP 20 RANKED RECRUITS

HM=Honorable mention

The Hits:

• The top five recruits all scored 20-plus points in their freshman seasons, led by NC State’s Leah Shackley, who surprisingly put up more points than #1 Katie Grimes. Shackley set new lifetime bests in both backstroke events, placing 6th in the 100 back (50.06) and 4th in the 200 back (1:48.52), and she also won the ‘B’ final of the 100 fly (50.59) to score 37 points. She was also a key member on four of NC State’s relays.
• Grimes, who hadn’t committed to Virginia when the last version of our recruit rankings were released and only joined the team for the second semester, was a big point scorer for the Cavaliers but given her resume, underperformed relative to expectations at NCAAs. Nonetheless, she placed 4th in the 500 free and 400 IM, and 13th in the 1650, to score 34 points. For what it’s worth, her best times would’ve won all three events.
• The third-highest freshman scorer was Virginia’s Anna Moesch, who stepped in seamlessly on the juggernaut Virginia team, contributing quick legs on their winning 200 free, 400 free and 400 medley relays while also swimming on the runner-up 800 free relay alongside Grimes. Individually, Moesch set a best time of 1:42.39 to place 5th in the 200 free, and she also took 4th in the 100 free to score 29 points.
• NC State’s Erika Pelaez had a strong debut NCAA postseason, following up lifetime bests in the 100 back (50.46) and 200 back (1:50.56) at ACCs with new PBs in the 200 back (1:49.81) and 100 fly (50.65) at NCAAs, placing 7th and 10th, respectively. She also placed 11th in the 100 back to score 25 points while also contributing to four Wolfpack relays.
• The third Virginia swimmer ranked in the top five, Leah Hayes, was 5th in the 400 IM and 9th in the 200 IM for 23 points, finishing just outside the points with a 17th-place finish in her other event, the 200 breast.
• The other ranked recruit to score double-digit points as a first-year was Texas’ Piper Enge, who was 5th in the 100 breast after producing a pair of 58.1 swims. Enge set a best of 57.69 in the 100 breast at the Eddie Reese Showdown in January, and the PB Enge produced in the 200 breast (2:07.90) at that meet would’ve also been good enough for a second swim (ended up 32nd in 2:10.60).
• Twelve of 20 ranked recruits and two more Honorable Mentions ended up scoring individually at their debut NCAAs, which is an uptick from last year, when 10 ranked recruits and an HM scored. Additionally, only four of the 25 swimmers listed didn’t compete at NCAAs in some capacity.
• The Texas duo of Kate Hurst and Campbell Chase, both HM recruits, scored in their NCAA debuts with 10th-place finishes, Hurst doing so in the 1650 free and Chase in the 200 IM. Both showed major progress in their first season in Austin, setting new bests in their primary events.

The Misses:

With three more seasons of eligibility, there are no real misses, but we’re simply looking at swimmers who may have not performed as expected as freshmen.

• Stanford’s Levenia Sim was the top-ranked recruit who didn’t earn an NCAA invite as a freshman, though she still had a solid season that included setting a personal best time in the 200 back (1:53.50), which fell just 19 one-hundredths shy of the NCAA cutline. She also clocked 52.30 in the 100 back, just over six-tenths shy of the qualifying cut-off (51.68).
• Sim’s teammate Addison Sauickie also had an impressive season despite missing an NCAA invite, with her 200 free time of 1:44.82 from the Texas Hall of Fame Invite falling just eight one-hundredths back of the cutline—she was among the top alternates for the meet. She also set a PB of 4:41.85 in the 500 free which would’ve easily qualified in 2021 and 2022 and would’ve been close last year.
• Camden Doane didn’t quite hit her stride during her first year at Louisville, recording season-bests of 1:57.01 in the 200 fly, 1:58.05 in the 200 IM and 4:14.77 in the 400 IM after coming in with respective bests of 1:55.90/1:57.40/4:10.16.
• The top-ranked recruit who didn’t score was Tennessee’s Jillian Crooks, who earned an NCAA invite in the 50 free after clocking a PB of 21.91 at the Tennessee Invitational. She finished 54th in the 50 free (22.33), 45th in the 100 free (48.59) and 37th in the 100 back (52.14) at NCAAs.

UNRANKED RECRUITS

And of course, we’ll include which unranked recruits earned NCAA invites and scored points this season – both domestic up-and-comers and international pickups.

DOMESTIC:

• All of the unranked domestic recruits who scored at their debut NCAAs were featured as part of the “Best of the Rest” section in the last edition of the class rankings, so no one came absolutely out of nowhere to score, though these four certainly took big steps during their freshman seasons.
• Ohio State’s Mila Nikanorov held best times of 4:42 and 16:17 in the 500 and 1650 free in our last recruit rank article from June 2024, and she dropped all the way down to 4:36.38 in the 500 at NCAAs, earning her 6th place in the final. In the mile, Nikanorov set a best time of 15:49.26 at the midseason Ohio State Invite, 28 seconds under her best time entering college, and followed up by going 15:50 at Big Tens to place 2nd and then clocking 15:51.95 at NCAAs for 7th. With 25 individual points, only the top five ranked recruits outsourced her among first-year swimmers.
• Virginia’s Charlotte Wilson took more than three seconds off her best time in the 200 back during her freshman year, culminating with a 1:51.28 clocking in the NCAA consolation final to place 11th overall. She also dropped from 52.2 to 51.6 in the 100 back and 1:59.5 to 1:57.4 in the 200 IM.
• Florida’s Addison Reese broke 1:55 for the first time in the 200 fly in the NCAA prelims, touching in 1:54.14 to advance into the ‘B’ final where she finished 13th in 1:54.30. She came into the season with a best time of 1:55.97.
• Amelia Bodenstab had an incredible progression in the 200 free as a freshman at Louisville. She entered the season with a best time of 1:45.96, cracked 1:45 for the first time at ACCs (1:44.33), and then took another big step at NCAAs, clocking 1:43.67 in the prelims before placing 13th in the consolation final in 1:43.93. She also improved by more than four seconds in the 500 free, getting down to 4:40.55 at NCAAs.

INTERNATIONAL:

• Canadians made up three of the five international freshmen who scored double-digit points, led by Tennessee’s Ella Jansen, who set numerous best times at SECs and despite not improving at NCAAs, still scored in two events with 9th-place finishes in the 500 free (4:34.62) and 400 IM (4:02.53).
• Florida’s Julie Brousseau scored in the same two events, placing 10th in the 500 free (4:36.58) and 13th in the 400 IM (4:05.83), and she also set a best time of 15:57.60 in the 1650 free to snag 16th place and score an extra point.
• Like Jansen and Brousseau, Ohio State’s Sienna Angove performed better at the conference championships, but she still scored in her NCAA debut after cracking the ‘A’ final in the 400 IM (4:04.60 prelims), placing 8th (4:07.83), after winning the Big Ten title in February (4:03.92).
• The French duo of Mary-Ambre Moluh and Lilou Ressencourt produced a combined 24.5 points for Cal, with Moluh cracking the ‘A’ final in the 100 back (7th), placing 14th in the 50 free, and contributing on four relays. Ressencourt, who is officially listed as a senior in the meet results due to her eligibility but for the purposes of this article is part of this class, was 11th in the 200 fly (1:53.41) and 13th in the 100 fly (51.19) while swimming on two Golden Bear relays. The 21-year-old is expected to have one more year of eligibility.
• Other international scorers were Florida’s Anita Bottazzo, Louisville’s Daria Golovaty and NC State’s Lisa Nystrand. Bottazzo, an Italian, was one of the breakout swimmers throughout the season, sitting among the top women in the nation in the 100 breast before she placed 9th at NCAAs in 57.84 after setting a PB of 57.49 in November. Golovaty, a native of Israel, was 15th in the 200 free after breaking 1:44 at ACCs (1:43.98), while Nystrand, a Swede, set best times in the 400 IM (4:07.02) and 200 IM (1:56.65) at NCAAs to place 15th and 30th, respectively.

DIVING:

• Alejandra Estudillo Torres was the top-scoring diver at the NCAA Championships and including swimmers, ranked 10th for the entire meet, proving to be an invaluable member of the Texas Longhorns. Estudillo Torres, a Mexican native, won the 3-meter national title and also placed 6th on 1-meter and added a 9th-place finish on platform for 42 points.
• UNC’s Lanie Gutch finished with 16 points after a strong 3rd-place showing in the 1-meter event, contributing 28% of the Tar Heels’ points at the meet.
• The other double-digit scoring first-year diver was Stanford’s Anna Lemkin, who only competed in the platform event and landed a spot in the ‘A’ final, scoring 339.60 for 5th place and 14 points.

ARCHIVES: REVISITING RECRUIT RANKS