Competitor Coach of the Month: Greg Meehan

Competitor Coach of the Month is a recurring SwimSwam feature shedding light on a U.S.-based coach who has risen above the competition. As with any item of recognition, Competitor Coach of the Month is a subjective exercise meant to highlight one coach whose work holds noteworthy context – perhaps a coach who was clearly in the limelight, or one whose work fell through the cracks a bit more among other stories. If your favorite coach wasn’t selected, feel free to respectfully recognize them in our comment section.

After a hiccup in their preparation plan in February, the Stanford women exceeded expectations at the Women’s NCAA Championships with Greg Meehan leading the way.

After telling SwimSwam that he was planning on sending his NCAA qualifiers home midway through the ACC Championships to help prepare them for NCAAs, Meehan and the Cardinal ended up staying for the entire meet after the conference office reportedly got involved.

After finishing as the runner-ups to juggernaut Virginia in their ACC Championship debut, Stanford followed up by finishing in the same position at NCAAs, ending Texas’ three-year run as the second-best team in the nation as the Cavaliers made it five titles in a row.

The Cardinal earned the runner-up finish with 417 points, 23 clear of 3rd-place Texas (394), after outscoring their psych sheet projection by 82 points.

Among the highlights for Stanford at NCAAs was the 800 free relay, where they steamrolled Virginia to win the title by more than four seconds in 6:46.98, with Caroline Bricker, Aurora Roghair, Lillie Nordmann and Kayla Wilson all delivering blistering legs, including Bricker with a notable 1:41.73 lead-off to drop nearly a second from her best time.

Bricker went on to score 50 points individually at the meet, including winning the 400 IM in a lifetime best of 3:57.36, giving her a 12-second improvement in the event in just two years at Stanford. She also set best times in the 200 fly (1:51.55) and 200 IM (1:52.01), placing 3rd and 5th, respectively.

Redshirt junior Torri Huske led the team with 54 points, winning the 200 IM title for the first time in a lifetime best of 1:49.67 while finishing as the runner-up in the 100 free (46.01) and 100 fly (48.90), with the 100 free marking a new best time.

Other top performers for the Cardinal were junior Lucy Bell and Roghair, a senior.

Bell won the first individual title of her career in the 200 breast, setting a personal best of 2:04.28, and she also set PBs en route to placing 3rd in the 400 IM (4:00.24) and 6th in the 200 IM (1:52.47).

Roghair was the runner-up in the 500 free (4:33.90) and 1650 free (15:39.21) after setting respective PBs of 4:31.63 and 15:36.43 earlier this season.

Also scoring 20-plus points for Stanford in the pool was Nordmann, a senior, who placed 6th in the 200 fly (1:52.10) and set best times in the 200 IM (1:55.14) and 100 fly (50.96) to finish 15th and 12th, respectively.

In addition to their 800 free relay victory, the Cardinal were runner-ups in the 200 medley relay and placed 3rd in the 200 free, 5th in the 400 free and 6th in the 400 medley relay, scoring 160 relay points after they were seeded for 142.

About Competitor Swim

Since 1960, Competitor Swim® has been the leader in the production of racing lanes and other swim products for competitions around the world. Competitor lane lines have been used in countless NCAA Championships, as well as 10 of the past 13 Olympic Games. Molded and assembled using U.S. – made components, Competitor lane lines are durable, easy to set up and are sold through distributors and dealers worldwide.

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