Virginia Women Have No Top-20 Commits For 2027, But Overseas Talent Could Continue Dynasty

All dynasties eventually come to an end, whether in football, basketball, or the pool.

It’s no secret the Virginia Cavalier women have been unstoppable for the past five seasons. But for a team with so much success, they are still awaiting a commitment from a top-20 recruit in SwimSwam’s rankings for the class of 2027. In fact, at the time of writing, they appear to have no publicized commits in general.

Tennessee and Texas lead the 2027 top-20 recruits with four each, followed by Stanford with three. NC State has two, while Cal, Cal (2026), Florida, Georgia, and Notre Dame each have one, for a total of 18 recruits across the listed programs:

Note: Cal (2026) refers to second-ranked Rylee Erisman, who reclassified from the class of 2027 to the class of 2026.

Notably, six of the top 40 recruits are still yet to commit, including two in the top 20, but that typically signals either a Stanford or Ivy League commitment due to their admission procedures.

Remember, SwimSwam does NOT include international recruits in the rankings. We focus only on American-based athletes, simply because there is so much uncertainty with international recruits – if they’ll come to the United States, when they’ll come to the States, and with what graduating class they should be ranked. Projecting international recruits often becomes more of a discussion of when they’ll first join a college program and not which program they’ll join.

Thankfully, 2026 is a different story for Virginia, where they have two verbal commits: #8 Alyssa Sagle and #18 Molly Workman.

Sagle is the second-best all around backstroker in the class, currently boasting PBs of 51.71 and 1:51.73 in the 100 and 200. As for Workman, she is one of five swimmers in this class who are sub-49 in the 100 free (48.85), the most valuable event in college swimming, making her a future relay factor for the Cavaliers. She’s also one of the most wide-ranging sprinter, as she owns bests of 22.37 in the 50 free, 53.9 in the 100 fly, 54.6 in the 100 back, and 1:02.4 in the 100 breast.

Despite the five-time NCAA Champions only getting two of the top American recruits for 2026, they could arguably still have the best incoming class on paper due to five immediate impact internationals: Jessica Thompson, Olivia Hine, Jana Pavlic, Smilte Plytnykaite, and Nina Jazy. This should provide stability heading into the fall of 2027, when they could bring in lesser-known recruits who may not be immediate first-year scorers.

Thompson comes from South Africa, and is the most versatile of the three. This past August, she swam at the World Junior Championships in Otopeni, where she qualified for two event finals in the 50 back and 50 fly events. She finished 4th in the 50 back, touching in 28.06, just under a tenth off the 27.98 best time she set in the semifinals. In the 50 fly, she was 8th in 26.71. Her best time, again, came from the semifinals at 26.09.

She also owns best times in the 1:01 range for the 100 fly and 100 back, and has been 25-low and 56-mid in the sprint freestyles.

Australia’s Hine is a pure sprinter, boasting bests of 26-low and 59-high in the butterfly events, as well as 26-low and 58-low in the sprint frees.

Pavlic, who hails from Croatia, has been on a mainstay of her country’s national team for years. At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, after missing qualification in Tokyo in 2021 by just .15 seconds at age 14, she swam the 50 free and 100 free. There, she finished 25th (25.24) and 21st (55.77), respectively.

At the 2024 European Junior Championships, she swam 24.67 in the 50 free. That time was the top seed after the semi-finals but added time to finish 5th in finals. At the Croatian Championships last July, she swam her current PB of 55.55 in the 100 free. She was the 2022 World Junior Champion in the 50 fly, the 2021 European Junior silver medalist in the 50 free, and the 2022 European Junior bronze medalist in the 50 fly.

The dynasty should continue for several years if they maintain their typical trend of landing top-tier international talent and return to securing two to five top-20 recruits per class. However, failing to land top-20 recruits for consecutive recruiting cycles could add up quickly. Texas and Cal are not only getting some of the top American recruits but generational phenoms, so the team race could be closer in the coming years than in the past.

Special thanks to Anne Lepesant for providing recruiting data for this article.