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Emily Thompson, the #11-ranked recruit in SwimSwam’s girls’ high school class of 2024, announced her verbal commitment to Stanford in an Instagram post made on Monday. She joins #4 Levenia Sim, #14 Annika Parkhe, and Lila Heffernan in Stanford’s class of 2028.
Thompson hails from Basking Ridge, New Jersey and attends Ridge High School. She swims for the Greater Somerset YMCA, which is the same club that #7 Anna Moesch swims at. It is also the former club of 2023 World Championships medalists Jack Alexy and Matt Fallon.
I am elated to announce my verbal commitment to continue my academic and athletic career at Stanford University! So many thanks to my family, friends, coaches, and teachers for helping me achieve this lifelong dream of mine. I’m looking forward to the next four years on the farm! GO TREES!! 🌲❤️🤍
Both of Thompson’s IM times would have been fast enough to qualify for the 2023 NCAA Championships, while her 400 IM time would have made the ‘B’ final. In the class of 2024, only #1 Katie Grimes and #2 Leah Hayes have a faster 400 IM than her. She also has strong butterfly times, and she could pick up the 200 fly as a third event at NCAAs. Both her 100 and 200 fly times are less than half a second away from the 2023 NCAAs cut line.
Thompson set her personal best times in the 200/400 IM and 100/200 fly at the 2023 YMCA Short Course National Championships.
Thompson’s Best Times (SCY):
- 400 IM: 4:09.05
- 200 IM: 1:56.85
- 200 fly: 1:56.42
- 100 fly: 52.51
- 100 back: 54.41
- 200 back: 1:56.21
- 100 breast: 1:01.87
- 200 breast: 2:15.36
- 200 free: 1:49.36
- 100 free: 50.25
- 50 free: 23.09
Thompson is also on the 2022-23 U.S. Junior National Team. Last year, she finished 29th in the 50 free, 14th in the 200 fly, and 12th in both the 200 IM and 200 fly at the 2022 Junior Pan Pacific Championships. This year, she was not named onto the roster for the 2023 Junior World Championships.
Recently, Stanford has lost many big pieces such as NCAA Champions Claire Curzan and Taylor Ruck. In the 2024-25 NCAA season, with the arrival of top 20 recruits Thompson, Sim, and Parkhe and the return of Torri Huske from her Olympic redshirt year, the Cardinal should be in much better shape.
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One thing that I’ve noticed – more and more over recent years – is SwimSwam does **nothing** but enable posters who’re SOLELY commenting to denigrate swimmers’ announcements: and/or their preferred destinations’ coaches, especially if they hate the institutions and/or coaches said SAs chose. Shame!
Emily, congrats to you and your support circle for your great swimming and academic acheivements!
Good luck at conference meet, lol
Congratulations Emily! Stanford is lucky to have you! Continued success and much love from Jersey. We’ll be cheering!
If you don’t want to make the Olympics, Stanford is a great call. Best combo of A+ education, great experience, and pretty good swimming. I hope Emily swims best times and gets a killer education. But Curzan was right in running for the door.
A lot of these comments are so insulting to the athletes. College commitment is a huge decision, and one which each athlete will have given a lot of consideration to. The opinions of the swimswam comments section, and recent Stanford results will probably not have escaped her but it’s still the place she wants to be: incredible academics, maybe Greg is the coach she felt more comfortable with, maybe she felt like this is the right team atmosphere for her – whatever her reasoning, she’s thought about it, made her decision and we should respect it rather than telling a young woman she’s got it wrong and is just going to get slower (as if college commitments are based on… Read more »
This! Also the reason I am not bummed that my daughter’s commitment has not been shared on Swim Swam yet. Would love the article but don’t need negative comments on coaching, program, etc – all things my daughter completely vetted during her recruitment and she is so happy and confident about her decision. Thank you.
If she has done her research and is happy then that’s all that matters. The comments are a reflection on the recent churn of swimmers and the coaching rather than the girls themselves which people are entitled to talk about…
So how about we keep the (usually well known & repetitive) critical comments about a coach / college to a story that is about the coach / college, rather than hijacking a teen’s recruit post? Seems a lot of these recruit posts are starting to go sideways lately … criticism of coaches and even cheap shots at swimmers. If you don’t have anything positive to say about a teenager posting their choice of college, then don’t say anything.
I dont think anyone is taking cheap shots at the swimmer OR the college here….
Going 1:56 in three of the five 200s shows some consistency! Very impressive!
Picking Stanford the academic institution is a great choice for many. Picking a Stanford athletic program, swimming or otherwise, leaves a lot of open questions. As of today, Stanford has no conference home a year from now. What is likely to change is the decline of athletic department revenue. It’s an open question how this may impact swimming or any other sport at Stanford over the next five years.