New NCAA Championship Mid-Major Automatic Qualifying Update: WOMEN’S EDITION

If nothing else, the new NCAA qualifying system sure made projections more complicated.

In 2025, the CSCAA pioneered, and the NCAA eventually approved, a new NCAA Championship qualifying system whereby swimmers who hit a certain time standard en route to an NCAA Division I conference title will automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships.

The new proposal drew cheers from mid-major coaches, who now feel they have a clearer avenue to NCAA qualifying, and jeers from many in the traditional power conferences, knowing that some of their lower-end qualifiers are likely to be bumped by slower swimmers from mid-major conferences.

Those standards were set at the 72nd-best time from last year’s NCAA Championship meet.

This article will focus on the women’s meet

Individual Events – Women’s – 2026 NCAA Qualifying Standards

There will be fewer mid-major swimmers who ‘skip the line’ to the women’s NCAA Championship Meet, where roughly the top 38-or-so swimmers in each event usually qualify. The men’s meet, which usually takes around 30-or-so per event, will likely (though not guaranteed) have more swimmers who wouldn’t have qualified under the old system grab spots by virtue of being conference champions.

In earnest, attempting to somehow break down what all this new qualifying might mean for the upcoming NCAA Championship meets, we’ve gone through and run some data on the current mid-major swimmers who are within reach of an NCAA qualification.

While there are no neat, tidy conclusions to reach because of the complexity of the situations, here’s the approach we took:

• Swimmers who are already ranked in the top 30 of their events are marked in the table with an “X”. Remember that swimmers who finish the season in this range are likely to qualify for the NCAA Championships regardless of whether they win their conference title or not. Of course, these rankings are bound to change through the conference season, but it’s a rough cut.
• Swimmers who are not in the top 30 but are under the conference-champion-standard, are marked with a “Y”. This is your reminder that they have to do the swim in the final at their conference championship meet, AND WIN, for it to count.
• Swimmers who are within 1% of the time standard are marked with a “Z”. These swimmers would need to drop time and win their conference title

Rough Cut Numbers

• There are 25 Xs, who would plausibly qualify under the old system.
• There are 59 Ys, who if they repeat their season best en route to a conference title would qualify
• There are 99 Zs, who would need a time drop and a conference win to qualify

But don’t lose your mind that there are going to be 150 mid-major swimmers at the NCAA Championships. There are lots of caveats to those numbers:

• There are some duplicate swimmers (and NCAA is capped based on swimmers not swims), like Nevada’s Scarlett Ferris.
• Not all of the Ys will hit the standard at their conference meets
• There are a ton of counts in here who come from the same conference.

Specifically, the Ivy League (58) and Mountain West (48) combine to account for a majority of those swims. With only 18 individual swimming events on the NCAA calendar, at least 70 of the Xs and Ys and Zs above won’t qualify – at least as automatic qualifiers.

Swims Above, Represented By Conference:

In the 50 free, for example, the Mountain West has two swimmers who will probably qualify on their own merit (Darcy Revitt and Scarlett Ferris). But then the Mid-American Conference has an electric women’s 50 free field with four swimmers within 1% of the qualifying time (Payton Kelly, Ada Szwabinska, Zita Szoke, and Callie Parkes).

If you’ve been watching sports long enough, your instinct might be that there’s some kind of ‘lose to win’ scenario. In many cases there isn’t – for example, Payton Kelly from Ball State is already faster than the qualifying time, but…that doesn’t mean anything for NCAA qualifying unless she repeats it in the conference final. The only scenario where this comes into play would be if the best swimmer in the conference is clearly qualified based on her national ranking and sandbags the final so that the next-best swimmer in the conference can qualify by going under the qualifying standard in the final and winning. Or one swimmer wins one event, then they let the other win the 100 free.

Keep an eye out for these shenanigans, especially if they’re teammates. While we are not explicitly casting specific aspersions on any of these swimmers or teams, the only obvious opportunities for this are: the women’s 100 breaststroke, where Fresno State’s Mackenzie Lung is clearly qualified with her 57.92, but where teammates Aliz Kalmar (59.57) and Jenna Pulkkinen (59.82) would likely need drops to qualify; the same holds in the 200 breast, though Kalmer has already been under the qualifying time there so she would just need to ‘win’ with the same time. Washington State’s Emily Lundgren lurks as a non-cooperative spoiler.

Remember that only 14 extra hypothetical mid-major women would have qualified under the new system last year. 26 mid-major women actually qualified for NCAAs last year just by ‘being fast enough.’

Battles to Watch

I went through and picked out a few big-time conference battles for automatic qualifying spots that I think will be interesting.

• Ivy League 200 free: Isabella Dieffenthaller of Brown, Savannah Skow of Princeton, Crystal Yuen of Brown, and Morgan Lukinac of Brown are all hovering around the qualifying time of 1:45.53. Diffenthaller has been 1:45.39, Skow has been 1:45.71, Yuen has been 1:45.87, and Lukinac has been 1:46.00. With so many opportunities, it seems like a highlikelyhood that at least one hits. All four have been faster than last year’s Ivy League winning time, though keep in mind there was only one season best among the Ivy League top four at last year’s meet. Side quest: the Brown 800 free relay looks really good.
• Ivy League 500 free: Caroline Daher of Harvard (4:42.98), Alexandra Basteon of Harvard (4:43.02), Natalie Garre of Brown (4:43.34), and Anna Moehn of Penn (4:43.58) have all already been under the qualifying standard (4:43.70). They’re all currently ranked 46th or lower in the NCAA, so none can count on qualifying the old fashioned way without a drop. I think we can count on an auto qualifier coming out of this race.
• Ivy League 1650 Free: Penn teammates Sydney Bergstrom (16:09.74) and Anna Moehn (16:11.18) are both currently ranked top 10 in the nation, though neither time is likely to earn an invite without being a champion – 1650 free rankings are most tenuous come conference championship season. Along with Brown’s Natalie Garre, Harvard’s Alexandra Bastone, and Harvard’s Carolina Daher, the Ivy League already has five swimmers under the qualifying standard, with many more close to it.
• Mountain West 200 Back: San Diego State’s Abby Storm (1:53.27) and Colorado State’s Tess Whineray (1:53.36) are both well under the standard of 1:54.80. Both have leveled up in a big way this season, especially Whineray, whose best time last season was just 1:55.60. Winner of this race probably goes to NCAAs. Data point: at last year’s Mountain West meet, Storm, the winner, dropped over a second, while Whineray added about nine-tenths from her mid-season best.
• Ivy League 200 Fly: Princeton’s Eleanor Sun (1:55.66), Harvard’s Kiley Wilhelm (1:55.91), Princeton’s Heidi Smithwick (1:56.86), Harvard’s Sydney Lu (1:57.07), and Princeton’s Chloe Kim (1:57.07) have all been under the qualifying standard (1:57.11). This group did a lot better at hitting season and lifetime bests at the Ivy League Championship, and both Princeton women Sun and Smithwick wound up faster than the NCAA invite time. This might be an ‘auto buster’ where someone drops a ton of time and makes the auto qualifier moot, but the winner, at least, probably goes to NCAAs.
• Ivy League 400 IM: Kim (4:09.82) and Sun (4:10.17) again will battle for a spot, with the winner likely to earn a spot at NCAAs. Both would need a drop to earn an invite based on national ranking, but both are well under the qualifying standard for an auto invite. The Ivy League hasn’t published their new meet schedule yet, but this could be an opportunity for teammate shenanigans, albeit kind of a weird longshot of one. If, say, Kim dropped to a 4:08-mid in prelims, she could let Sun win finals, or if Sun qualifies in the 200 fly, she could let Kim win this race.

The Data

Note: a ton of this was manual work. Please note any errors in the comments!

Link to open in Google Sheets, where it’s easier to read.