The College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) announced the women’s NCAA Division I award winners for the 2024-25 season on Mar. 24th. The announcement comes with the end of the 2025 NCAA Women’s Division I Championships in Federal Way, Washington, where the University of Virginia won its fifth-straight team title.
Swim Coach & Swimmer of The Year
Unsurprisingly, the Cavaliers picked up multiple awards, which are determined by a vote of the CSCAA-Member Division I head swimming coaches and head diving coaches. Virginia head coach Todd DeSorbo was named the Women’s DI Swim Coach of the Year for the fifth consecutive year. DeSorbo’s Cavaliers earned gold in 10 events, including four relays, winning the team title with 544 points, 127 more than runner-up Stanford.
A crucial piece of Virginia’s championship roster was Gretchen Walsh, named the Women’s DI Swimmer of the Year award for the second straight year. Walsh swept her individual events for the second year in a row, putting on dominant performances in the 50 freestyle, 100 butterfly, and 100 freestyle.
She broke her 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle NCAA records during the event finals and tied her 50 freestyle mark leading off the 200 freestyle relay. She swam 46.97 in the 100 butterfly, breaking her record for the second time that day and becoming the first woman sub-47 seconds in the event. No other woman has broken 48 seconds. Walsh wrapped up her individual NCAA career by establishing a 44.71 all-time mark in the 100 freestyle.
She was the only swimmer to sweep her individual events at the 2025 NCAA Championships.
Gretchen Walsh’s Results
- 50 freestyle: 1st, 20.49
- 100 butterfly: 1st, 46.97 NCAA Record
- 100 freestyle: 1st, 44.71 NCAA Record
- 200 medley relay: 1st, 1:31.10 NCAA Record — 20.88 butterfly split
- 200 freestyle relay: 1st, 1:24.45 — 20.37 lead-off =NCAA Record
- 400 medley relay: 1st, 3:20.20 — 47.35 butterfly split
- 400 freestyle relay: 1st, 3:06.01 — 45.04 relay split
Diving Coach & Diver of The Year
Texas coach Matt Scoggin won Women’s DI Diving Coach of the Year, earning the award for the sixth time in his career. This is the 12th overall NCAA Coach of the Year honor Scoggin has won in his career, as he’s also been awarded on the men’s side.
The Texas women’s divers scored a combined 92 points in Federal Way, the most of any diving program. Three divers scored on the 1-meter and 3-meter events, with two athletes reaching finals on the platform.
Scoggin coached freshman Alejandra Estudillo to the win on the women’s 3-meter event. She scored in all three diving events, taking 6th on the 1-meter and 10th on the platform. Sophomore Bayleigh Crawford placed third on the platform and seventh 3-meter, while senior Hailey Hernandez finished fifth on the 1-meter board.
Miami-FL’s Chiara Pellacani was named the Women’s DI Diver of the Year for the first time. Part of a successful Hurricanes roster, Pellacani scored a team-high 37 points as the team notched a 13th-place finish at the championships.
Pellacani earned her points by winning the 1-meter competition and taking second in the 3-meter.
Chiara Pellacani’s Results
- 1-meter diving: 1st, 354.65 points
- 3-meter diving: 2nd, 387.60 points
Todd DeSorbo and Bob Bowman are very clearly the two best American swim coaches. And I don’t think it’s close.
Forgive my ignorance, but is this awarded for the coach of the meet or the year? It seems that would be two different awards.
It’s technically coach of the meet, I guess. NCAAs is the culmination of a year of training and prep, so I don’t think it’s unfair to call it coach of the year.
It would be interesting if there was an award that included regular season success, but I don’t think it would be the most fair. Some teams rest more than others, and some teams elect for easier schedules than others. I’m not sure how it could be fairly judged.
It literally is called the Swim Coach of the Year Award.
Of the year. It’s right there in the article.
Albiero or Looze woulda been my picks.
I would probably pick Albiero then Looze over Meehan because of talent. Stanford swam well and getting second is great but their team is comprised of mostly top 10 recruits over the past 4 years so its not surprising to see them do well. Feel like Louisville did the most with the “least”(not to be disparaging as the talent at Louisville is still very good).
All those arguing for Meehan- forgetting the downvotes for wanting to leave ACCs a day early?
All those arguing for Looze- forgetting the downvotes for wanting to bring in a club star to swim tournaments?
Kind of a silly award anyway. Some swimmers will thrive with certain coaches, others will thrive
with different coaches!
lol i disagreed with the peanut gallery on both those takes — and i think this meet vindicated them both 🙂
I don’t get this. You can disagree with some of their other actions and still think they deserve coach of the year.
i feel like the best way to control for ranked recruits skewing end results is just via pbs.
i also thought louisville had a pretty lights out meet but swimcloud only logged them with 9 pbs and a 23% pb rate, which is pretty good but not as good as the 3 other programs in question (stanford / indiana / uva).
this did make me curious to go down the rest of the list and cal rly stood out with 15 pbs and a 50% pb rate. this was pretty surprising to me bc i only rly paid attention to polonsky and ambre moluh and they had pretty divergent results. the rest of the roster had a great meet!… Read more »
this is such a bad argument. Then should we not give DeSorbo the award because of all the talented top 10 swimmers he recruited?
I don’t think you understood. It is just not about the talent on the team but what was achieved with the talent on the team. Last year, even with the most talented roster, I think UVA was the most impressive team and would have given the award to DeSorbo.
While UVA and Stanford were good this year, I think they have the two most talented rosters (maybe Texas for second without doing any research whatsoever). While there were some individuals that were impressive, I don’t think either one of these teams were the most impressive given the talent that they have.
Anti Coach of the Year award nominees: TX, TN and FLA
I mean obviously the best coach is the coach who wins the natty, that’s how it’ll always be. Despite Stanford surprising everyone. But I’d love to see a breakdown of votes, like did Greg and Torri get any votes or were both Gretchen and Todd unanimous
Hard to see how they wouldn’t be unanimous, at least Gretchen.
I can see an argument for Meehan but I think people in the comments here are putting too much stock into personal bests set at NCAAs
and not to be a UVA glazer but I think ppl have been way overreacting to Walsh losing in the 200 IM / breast (not in here necessarily but in comments over the last week). She’s clearly changed focus this year (evident from 400 IM => 100 breast) and its honestly kinda crazy that in the span of a single year, she dropped almost 1.2 seconds from her 100 breast and beat out a field with some very accomplished breaststroke specialists. I wonder how different the comments would’ve been if she just did the 200 breast and ran away with the title in that
Let’s not take credit away from Torri for beating Alex
I’m not taking away from it, I just don’t it was as big of an upset as some people are making it out to be, and honestly I’m not sure that I’d even call it an upset at all. Torri has clearly gotten better since her 1:50.0 from 2 years ago while I’m not surprised at all that dropping the 400 IM in favor of the 100 breast has made Alex a bit slower in the 200 IM. And also as Coach has pointed out below, the fact that she got surgery and had to take a break
I think people are also forgetting that Alex had surgery and did not get back in the water in September like her peers. Considering she did a full taper for Trials/ Olympics, had surgery, and then went to SCM Worlds (in lieu of training time), I thought she had an outstanding meet.
It’s more so how Stanford surprised everyone and did what they did. Virginia definitely didn’t swim up to their standards, only Gretchen really did
So Curzan should have swam faster is what your saying? Okey dokey.
Curzan, Howley, Gormsen, Wilson, Moesch, A walsh all went PBs.
Parker, Hayes were right on PBs.
To say that only 1 person swam “up to their standards” when you can easily look at data and see this is false is ridiculous.
Also don’t get how “stanford surprised everyone”. They have the second most talented roster at this meet. Besides Bricker and the 800 FR, I don’t think much of the meet was a surprise.
Meehan deserved it. Virginia had an okay meet overall. Stanford swam out of their minds, and Meehan put them in that position.
UVA swimmers set 5 individual and 1 relay NCAA record, won 6 individual events and 4 relays and scored 124 points more than Stanford. How is that not UVA swimming out of their minds?
I mean, Huske upset Walsh and Bricker upset Grimes. Yes, Huske was seeded first, but everyone in the comments was on here saying how Huske wouldn’t win. The 800 free relay crushed everyone by 4 seconds. Stanford swam their lights out. Meehan was robbed.
People love to doubt Stanford for some reason, Torri and Greg seem to be the focal point
UVA performed well, in line with expectations and predictions.
Stanford outperformed every expectations and predictions.
UVA won because of their depth and superstars. Stanford had a much better per-swimmer performance.
I would love to see a point comparison for individuals if how many spots they improved, and time improvement. Those two factors should weigh heavily in the coach award. Like others have said, it shouldn’t be the team that wins only
Virginia and Stanford had the same number of PBs last week — 20. I didn’t include extractions that weren’t actual events, like 50 fly, 50 breast, and 50 back.
Virginia
Curzan — 4
A Walsh — 1
G Walsh — 3 (including a tied PB)
Gormsen —1
Hartman — 2
Howley — 2
Moesch — 2
Skirboll — 2
Wilson — 3
Stanford
Huske — 3
Bricker — 5
Bell — 3
Mannion — 1
Nordmann — 2
Thomas — 2
Thompson — 4
this is neat but i feel like double counting pbs in the same event at the same meet feels kinda off. when i look at what swimcloud logs natively, its 17 / 16 / 14 pbs for stanford / indiana / uva, and their % pbs are at 45% / 59% / 27% (you can also subtract 1 from stanford and indiana if you want for the 50 of strokes).
% in particular is kinda interesting bc it confirms what i felt intuitively which was that indiana had the most lights out meet under the radar with a fairly small squad firing on all cylinders
this actually made me pretty curious about what happened last year as well — # of pbs came out as 12 / 15 / 19 for stanford / indiana / uva, with % of pbs as 35% / 60% / 38%.
indianas lowkey been cooking these past two years 😮
said this earlier but when their ranked recruits hit, watch out!
Then look at points, but Swimcloud is missing two of Gretchen’s PBs because they broke Swimcloud.
Virginia’s PBs resulted in 166 points. Stanford’s 155. One of Virginia’s PBs was leadoff on a winning relay. One of Stanford’s was leadoff on a winning relay, and another was leadoff on a third place relay.
Virginia (166)
Curzan — 4 (57)
A Walsh — 1 (20)
G Walsh — 3 (40 + first place relay leadoff)
Gormsen — 1 (14)
Hartman — 2 (0)
Howley — 2 (15)
Moesch — 2 (14)
Skirboll — 2 (0)
Wilson — 3 (6)
Stanford (155)… Read more »
Huske — 3 (37 + third place relay leadoff)
Kyle Sockwell gonna have a field day with broken SwimCloud