How Much Faster Are Conference Championship Meets Getting? Part VIII: Big Ten Women

This article is number eight in the series looking at how the times at the conference level have been changing in the last five years (2020-2024) for the Power 5 conferences and the Ivy League. It’s felt like the times required to qualify, final and win have been coming down considerably recently, but how much does the data back this up?

We’ll be including the Pac-12, despite its swimming & diving championships no longer running.

1. SEC Mens
2. SEC Womens
3. ACC Mens
4. ACC Womens
5. PAC-12 Men’s
6. PAC-12 Women’s
7. Big Ten Men’s
8. Big Ten Women’s
9. Big-12
10. Ivy League

Indiana snapped Ohio State’s four-year championship streak last year, but neither of the two is the team to beat in the swimming events this year based on our Swimulator. Instead, that’s Michigan, although the aforementioned teams along with USC are close behind. When taking diving into account the two powerhouses should be the top two again, but it’s likely to be close (although maybe not quite as close as last year). As a whole, the conference is one of the more static ones in terms of times but they’re a consistent presence nationally, especially in the relays. Ohio State and Indiana finished top-10 at NCAAs last year, and could well be joined there by Michigan in 2025.

WHAT DATA ARE WE LOOKING AT? 

We’ll look at the times required individually to make ‘A’ (8th), ‘B’ (16th) and ‘C’ (24th) finals (where they exist), as well as the winning time for each year. For relays, we’ll choose to look at 1st, 3rd and 8th. If there were fewer than eight teams competing, we would just take the times from 1st and 3rd. Other than the winning individual time, these will all be from heats.

WHAT ARE WE INTERESTED IN?

Have the times got faster, and is there a definitive trend in the times? The first of these is simple to work out – were last year’s times faster than in 2020 – but the second is a little trickier. How do we judge what is significant and what is maybe due to a single swimmer, à la Gretchen Walsh? To make this decision, we make use of something known as correlation- essentially how much of a link is there between two separate variables. In our case, the two variables are the year and the finishing time for each position.

A QUICK STATISTICS REFRESHER

The R-value is the measure of correlation and can take a value between -1 and 1. To get a sense of what an R-value means, there are three important values:

• An R-value of 1 would indicate that there is a perfectly linear positive relationship between the two (eg. each year the winning time increases by 0.5),
• An R-value of -1 would indicate a perfectly linear negative relationship (eg. each year the winning time decreases by 0.5).
• An R-value of 0 indicates that there is no relationship between the two – the winning time does not depend on the year at all.

Think about plotting the data on a graph of year against time and drawing a best-fit line through the points. The closer the points are to that line, the more correlated the data and the higher the R-value.

WHAT MAKES AN R-VALUE SIGNIFICANT?

With the data we’re choosing to look at, an R-value is only significant if it is either greater than 0.805 or less than -0.805. That is a pretty high threshold, and we’ll see that for some events and placings there’s a strong trend that doesn’t quite hit this.

So what does significant mean? In this context, it means that we can say that there is an extremely strong trend in the times for this event and placement getting faster – and that it’s happening every year. A winning time that has a general downward trend but fluctuates pretty wildly year on year will have an R-value closer to zero than an event that gets faster at a slower rate, but gets faster every time.

The R-value in this case is a measure of consistency – how confident we are that this is a real trend and not just noise in the data. The significance level (0.805) is our confidence threshold in this.

Because the significance threshold is so high, we’ll also define another – a strong threshold. We’ll set this to be when the R-value is greater than 0.5 or less than -0.5. Anything between these two values we’ll call Weak.

AN OVERVIEW

Of the 67 event/position combinations, 32 have been trending faster over the last 5 years.

Only 26 of the 67 were faster in 2024 than in 2020 though: the first conference where this is less than half, and the majority of the trends we see are weak. That isn’t always necessarily a bad thing – if times are strong throughout then any trends are shallow. As well as the downward trends being weak, most of the net changes we see are small. Only 11 (16.4%) improved by more than half a second.

FREESTYLE

There are similarities between the 50 and 100, but the trends in the 200 are pretty much the opposite. The shorter events are getting quicker for every combination except the winning time, where the transfer of Maggie Macneil had a big effect. The 200 however is ever so slightly slower in the times required to make each finale, but the winning time has been taken down under 1:43 from its high in 2021. There are three women quicker than that winning time this year already in Olympians Anna Peplowski, Stephanie Balduccini and Minna Abraham so that looks like continuing, but there are 20 women under last year’s ‘A’ final time. Five of those are from USC, but even without them that’s nearly two full heats, and we should see the times for every final in the 200 come down sharply this year. The strongest trend is the 100 ‘B’ final and there’s strong evidence that will continue – 16th in the conference is Michigan’s Christey Liang with a 48.82, a full half-second under the time required last year.

A mixed bag in distance free, although the ‘A’ and ‘B’ final times in the 500 were both back under the 2020 times last year and well on track to jump down this year: it takes sub-4:41 to rank top-8 in the conference at the moment. Anna Peplowski was the conference champion last year, but it’s Michigan with the top two seeds this time around in Hannah Bellard and Rebecca Diaconescu, both over two seconds quicker than Peplowski’s winning time in 2024. The one trend here that isn’t weak is the 8th place finish in the 1650, which has come down nearly 10 seconds.

BACKSTROKE

Beata Nelson is the conference record holder at both backstroke distances, and whilst between them Kacey McKenna and Phoebe Bacon swam the fastest winning times since Nelson in 2020 they’re still a little way off. The addition of Miranda Grana and USC’s Caroline Famous look to be pushing these times down closer to Nelson’s, especially in the 100 where both have been under 51. Further down the 100 has been getting quicker and is primed for a big jump this year. The 8th place finisher in prelims last year, Minnesota’s Paula Rodriguez Rivero, wouldn’t be seeded to make the ‘B’ final this year. The 200 is going the other way – the final ‘B’ and ‘C’ finalists were over a second slower in 2024 than in 2020.

BREASTSTROKE

Just like the men, the Big Ten women have a strong breaststroke tradition. Indiana leads the charge, but Ohio State went 1-2 in the 100 last year with Hannah Bach and Josie Panitz although both have now graduated. It may not be a swimmer from either of those universities that wins the breaststrokes this year though: USC’s arrival brings in Kaitlyn Dobler, a previous NCAA champion in the 100 and 3x conference champion in the 200 breaststroke back in the Pac-12. Somewhat surprisingly, two of the top four swimmers in the 100 are from UCLA in Karolina Piechowicz and Ana Jih-Schiff – they could put up big points here. The 200 has been won by Indiana the last five years, and 2024’s winner Brearna Crawford is only two hundredths behind Dobler for the top spot in the conference this year as she looks to defend her title. Away from the winning time, the trends are all up, with the biggest net change coming in the ‘A’ final time at each distance.

FLY

The trend in the winning time for the 100 Fly can be simplified to two words: Maggie MacNeil. The winner in the two years after, Katherine ‘Kit Kat’ Zenick, has been remarkably consistent, but not close to matching the Olympic champion from Tokyo. Most of the other combinations are trending upwards, although the ‘A’ final in the 100 had dipped below 53 the last two years before jumping back up. The 200 has been getting slower by over a second compared to 2024 at every position, but should be closer to the 2023 times this year. Most of that depth comes from swimmers who were already in the conference – Justina Kozan and Genevieve Sasseville are the only USC swimmers in the top 16.

IM

The medleys are almost uniformly slightly slower than in 2020, and have been trending that way as well. Finals times for both are currently on track to be quicker this year, but the winning time in each still looks like they’ll be well off what was required in 2020. Beata Nelson and Calypso Sheridan were the winners that year and their times stand up as the fastest in the five-year period. While most trends are very weak and will likely start heading down this year, IM is definitely an area that’s stayed pretty consistent.

RELAYS

The relays are reasonably stable in a lot of places, but one where they are not is the 200 free – we’ve got two big downward trends for 1st and 3rd. Elsewhere there are mostly weak trends and most of those are down. Ohio State and Indiana are responsible for most of the winning times, and four of the five have come down since 2020.

IN SUMMARY

A conference with fewer big drops than most, with only 6 of the 67 combinations being at least a second faster in 2024 than 2020, the Big Ten is also the most stable in terms of times. Only nine trends were significant (four down and five up), and there are definite areas of improvement (sprint freestyle) and drop-off (breaststroke and fly). Part of that could be attributed to a lack of big championship contenders at the top – they haven’t had a team finish in the top five at NCAAs since Michigan in 2019, and none have finished higher than seventh since then. USC’s addition this year could be a shot in the arm, but they join a crowded group at the top – it may be that the dogfight there is more conducive to racing for placement than times.