Johns Hopkins University recently announced that its men’s and women’s swim teams will be joining the Centennial Conference beginning this fall.
The Blue Jay swimmers have competed independent of a conference since leaving the Bluegrass Mountain Conference in 2016.
“We are excited to have a conference championship for our teams to work towards,” said Johns Hopkins head swim coach Scott Armstrong. “This will provide us with new goals and opportunities, and we are all extremely grateful to the Johns Hopkins athletic administration and the Centennial Conference for their support in creating this opportunity for the team.”
Centennial feels like a natural fit for the Baltimore-based university. It features ten other private, Division III universities from the mid-Atlantic region. Other Hopkins athletics teams already participate in the conference, though the school’s men’s lacrosse team is an affiliate of the Division I Big 10 Conference.
Centennial Conference Swim Teams:
- Bryn Mawr (women)
- Dickinson
- Franklin & Marshall
- Gettysburg
- McDaniel
- Swarthmore (2025 men’s and women’s conference champions)
- Ursinus
- Washington College
- Johns Hopkins
JHU will be a force to be reckoned with in its new home right off the bat. At the 2025 NCAA Championships, its men’s team placed 14th, higher than any team in the current Centennial Conference. The Lady Blue Jays, meanwhile, finished 13th, trailing only the 10th-place Swarthmore in Centennial rankings.
Moreover, many returning Johns Hopkins athletes could break conference records just by matching their fastest times recorded at the school before joining the conference. See the full list of athletes below that fit this bill, along with their best time from Hopkins:
Men
- Avery Clapp — 1:44.18 200 back, 47.31 100 fly, 1:44.56 200 fly
- Jonathan Wang — 54.05 100 breast
- Matthew Hartshorn — 3:53.37 400 IM
Women
- Julia Tuinman — 1:50.70 200 free
- Ken Lee — 55.78 100 back, 1:59.02 200 back
- Jaya Veerapaneni — 55.78 100 back
This move will allow the entire Blue Jay team to participate in a championship meet together before NCAAs. Recently, the team has travelled to the Cavalier Invite in Charlottesville, which has served as a suited and rested meet for some Hopkins athletes. The school’s full 2025-26 schedule is not yet available.
Can’t wait to see what their newcomers bring this season too
I wonder why they ever left the UAA (many moons ago when I went there).
An interesting decision considering their tennis teams just left the conference last year to be independent! Any hopkins insiders know what’s driving these divergent moves in the athletic department?
I expect automatic NCAA berths for conference titles is a big factor – free tix to the big show for a lot of swimmers
Given that not all the teams are in a singular conference anyways because of lax being D1, my understanding is that the individual teams have a lot more say over how they want to structure their seasons as opposed to one overarching departmental decision.
Needed a good meet in February
Massive change. Conference level titles and records for smaller teams (Washington, Ursinus, etc) will be that much more meaningful