Emory Women, Kenyon Men Lead D3 Swimulator Rankings

With the end of the major mid season invites, pretty much every team in the country has had a meet that they’ve taken seriously. This means that we can finally start to get some useful information by comparing team’s times so far. The easiest way to do this is with our Swimulator. The Swimulator takes everyone’s top times so far this season and scores out a national meet respecting individual event limits and reasonable event choices (swimmers can’t do two events in a row). No diving is included.

• D1 Men’s Rankings
• D1 Women’s Rankings

Women

9 Time defending champions Emory appear poised to stretch their winning streak to 10. They hold a 556 to 494 advantage over last year’s runner up, Kenyon. At this point last year Kenyon held a 634.5-519 advantage in the Swimulator scores and Emory ended up winning nationals by 103 points.

As always this time of the year, Williams is extremely low ranked. This is because NESCAC teams start their season much later than the rest of D3, so they haven’t had many opportunities to put up fast times yet. Williams are currently ranked with only 1 point. Last year they had 13 at this point in the season and they ended up 3rd at nationals with just over 400 points.

One new arrival in the rankings is St Kate’s. Their only scorer at nationals since 1992 was a diver in 2017 who has since graduated. Now they are ranked 7th with 144 projected points. St Kate’s brought in an incredibly strong recruiting class this year. Their freshmen carried them to 6th place rankings in the 400 and 800 free relays and 88 individual points, all from freshmen. It will be interesting to see if they can maintain their placing at the end of the year.

Men

Defending champions Denison trail conference rivals Kenyon 538.5-518 in the current Swimulator ranking. Kenyon should be happy with their top ranking, but temper that enthusiasm because of how things shook out last year. At this point last season Kenyon had 509.5 points in the Swimulator rankings and ultimately only scored 322 points at nationals (3rd place). They were passed by Emory who also look very similar to their totals from last year. At this point last season Emory had 381 points. This year they have 384. They scored 369.5 at nationals. If Emory repeat that and Kenyon fall off again, their main challenger for 2nd looks like Johns Hopkins.

Hopkins are well ahead of their pace from last season with 429.5 points, last year they had 362.5 at this point. They also fell off a bit at the end of the year with 287 points at nationals.

Similarly to the women’s rankings, late starting Williams, 10th at nationals last year, don’t appear in the current rankings. They will likely move up once they start doing more meets.

One team to keep an eye on the rest of the way is Carnegie Mellon. They have 149 points in the current projections good for 9th. Last year at this time they were projected to score 59 points. They ended up scoring 0 at nationals. So while they’re ahead of last year’s pace, history says they’re likely to drop off. With all of their projected points from freshmen and sophomores, perhaps this year will be different.

Closing Thoughts

The Emory women and Denison men look on pace to defend their titles. The Emory women have 6 swimmers ranked to score 30 or more points and are top 3 on every relay. The Denison men are incredibly deep as they currently have 17 men ranked in scoring range. However, if Kenyon can avoid the drop off they saw last year, they are possibly in a position to challenge for either title.

If you are interested to see the full event by event projections check out the full Swimulator page here (women, men). The event projections are below the points. Just scroll down. Below the event projections are individual swimmer point totals sorted by team.

I’ll be doing write ups on division 2 and some conference rankings in the coming days, but if you want to see those rankings before those articles are written, feel free to run the simulation you are interested in yourself.

One final thought: this type of ranking isn’t intended as an exact prediction of what will happen at the end of the season. It’s intended as a starting point when thinking about what will happen at the end of the year. This is a baseline. If your expectation is that a team will do better or worse, look at their swimmer’s current rankings and think about which swimmers are likely to move up or down between now and the end of the season.

Swimulator Projected Women’s Points

Swimulator projections do not include diving

Swimulator Projected Men’s Points

Swimulator projections do not include diving