32 Schools Qualify Relays For 2025 Women’s NCAA Championships

2025 Women’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

• March 19-22, 2025
• Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatics Center — Federal Way, Washington
• Short Course Yards (25 yards)
• Meet Central
• Official Psych Sheets
• Live Stream
• Invited swimmers by team (not including relay swimmers)
• Alternates list
• Eligible Relays

With the official psych sheets for the 2025 Women’s NCAA Championships dropping on Wednesday, we now know which relays have qualified to compete at the meet later this month in Federal Way.

A total of 32 schools have qualified at least one relay for the championships, an increase of seven from last year.

Below, find a breakdown of how teams can qualify relays for NCAAs:

How to qualify relays for NCAAs:

• The simplest way to qualify relays for NCAAs is to hit the ‘A’ cut, formally known as the “Qualifying Standard” in a relay.
• Once a team has an ‘A’ standard relay, they can also enter all relays where they’ve earned the ‘B’ standard, formally known as a “Provisional Standard.”
• Teams with four individual swimmers qualified can swim relay events in which they have at least a ‘B’ standard and bring up to four uninvited relay swimmers.
• Relays are qualified “to the team”, not the individual swimmers so teams can take whichever swimmers they want to use on the relay.
• Teams must have at least one individual invite to send relays.

Relays are obviously of paramount importance for teams vying for a top finish in the overall standings at NCAAs, as they’re worth double the points and can create massive swings in momentum for a team one way or another over the course of the meet.

Therefore, qualifying all five relays—and avoiding a relay DQ during the meet—is key for top programs as filling in the missing points from one relay is next to impossible.

At the midseason checkpoint, 22 women’s teams had qualified at least one relay for NCAAs with an ‘A’ cut, and that a number jumped up by 10 through the conference meets.

The 10 teams that punched their ticket to NCAAs in a relay after the midseason invites are:

• LSU Tigers
• Texas A&M
• UCLA
• Virginia Tech
• South Carolina
• Arizona
• Princeton
• Northwestern
• Missouri
• Cincinnati

SCHOOLS QUALIFIED TO SEND 1+ RELAYS TO NCAAs

The seven teams who have qualified for NCAAs in a relay this year after not doing so in 2024 are:

• Arizona – The Wildcats hit ‘A’ cuts in the 200 free and 200 medley relays at the Big 12 Championships after missing last year, with the 200 free relay (1:26.92) notably more than two seconds quicker than they were in 2023-24.
• Cincinnati – The Bearcats tied with Arizona for the 2nd place in the 200 medley relay at Big 12s, clocking 1:36.16 for an ‘A’ cut and new program record.
• Missouri – The Tigers hit an ‘A’ cut of 1:28.22 in the 200 free relay at SECs, with freshman Katie Kuehn contributing a clutch 21.64 split on the third leg.
• Northwestern – Northwestern clocked 1:28.34 in the 200 free relay at the Minnesota Last Chance Meet to dip under the ‘A’ cut of 1:28.42.
• Pitt – Qualified five relays for NCAAs for the first time in program history, including ‘A’ cuts in the 200 free and 200 medley.
• South Carolina – South Carolina picked up their ‘A’ cut in the 400 medley relay at SECs, touching in 3:30.81 to dip eight one-hundredths under the standard.
• UCLA – The Bruins got down to 1:35.80 for a new school record in the 200 medley relay at Big Tens, putting them nearly half a second under the ‘A’ cut (1:36.24).

2024-25 RELAY QUALIFYING TIMES

PROJECTED RELAY POINTS

Based on the psych sheet scoring courtesy of Andrew Mering, here’s how the relays project to score at NCAAs based on seed times: