How Much Faster are Conference Championship Meets Getting? Part X: Ivy League

This article is number 10 in the series looking at how the times at the conference level have been changing in the last 5 years (2020-2024) for the Power 5 conferences and the Ivy League. It’s felt like 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, even though the conference swim & dive championships no longer exist.

1. SEC Men’s
2. SEC Women’s
3. ACC Men’s
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

Harvard has been the men’s powerhouse at Ivy’s recently, but isn’t slated to win this year. Princeton comes in looking strongest, and Yale has the tools to pip Harvard as well. The women’s side may be even closer, with Princeton looking to defend their crown against the Crimson Tide, who went 7-0 in inter-conference dual meets this year including a 156-143 victory over Princeton.

WHAT DATA ARE WE LOOKING AT? 

We’re looking at a slightly different set of data for Ivy’s. As there was no 2021 championship, we’re including the 2019 results as well as 2020-2024 to give five championships, keeping the conference in line with the others we’ve looked 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 8 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 123 event/position combinations, 99 have been trending faster over the last 5 years.

Men

Women

91 of these combinations were faster in 2024 than in 2019 as well – 42 for men and 49 for women. That’s a pretty significant number that is improving, and this is whilst losing their only two NCAA champions since 2019 halfway through this time period: Dean Farris and Lia Thomas. That’s not to say that there isn’t top-tier talent in the Ivy League still – Matt Fallon is one of the favorites for the 200 breaststroke title and Noah Millard is the third-fastest miler this season with a 14:33. There’s been a lot of improvement in depth, and it was significantly harder to make some finals last year than in 2019 – the final spot for the 200 breast final for the men was over two seconds quicker.

FREESTYLE

Men’s

Women’s

Dean Farris dominated the 100 and 200 freestyle in 2019 and 2022, swimming the fastest winning times in the two events in 2019. Behind him there had been increasing depth, and that’s shown out after he graduated, especially in the 200. Times to ‘A’ and ‘B’ final are down by around a second each, and have been coming down consistently. The women’s side is a little more varied. Again, times to final are coming down but the winning times are not – Isabella Hindley’s winning times from 2019 would have still won last year.

Men’s

Women’s

Continuing a bit of a theme on the men’ s side, it’s the times slightly further down that have been improving the most. Before a jump up last year, the men’s 500 ‘A’ final time looked to be about to break 4:20, but even with the return of Noah Millard it might not do so again this year either. The women’s side is fairly consistent too – it’s taken a reasonably consistent time to final in the 500, and a winning time that has often been sub-4:40 from swimmers such as Anna Kalandadze, Lia Thomas and Ellie Marquardt – Alexandra Bastone may be the one to do so this year.

BACKSTROKE

Men’s

Women’s

Gunner Grant, a former World Junior Champion, won the 200 back every year he competed, swimming a 1:41.4 three times before breaking through with a 1:40.6 last year. Behind him, the ‘A’ final came down solidly into the 1:44s, but it’s the 100 where there have been big and consistent improvements. On the women’s side, it’s the final times at both distances that have seen the biggest drops. It’s been a freshman-heavy event at the top in the 100 though: Addie Bullock (2020), Jenna Reznicek (2022) and Anya Mostek (2023) all won the event in their first year.

BREASTSTROKE

Men’s

Women’s

A lot of improvements in men’s breaststroke, and the strength of the conference can be seen in the two NCAA ‘A’ finalists they had last year in the 200: Brown’s Jack Kelly and Penn’s Matt Fallon. They’re both geared more towards the 200, but the trends are still strong in the shorter distance. For the women’s side, it’s the depth again that’s improved, including a big drop for the 100 ‘A’ final. The winning time in the 200 has dropped a lot as well, but inconsistently, although last year’s winner Dakota Tucker is still only a Sophomore and could be the first swimmer to defend the 200 title in a decade.

FLY

Women’s

Surprisingly it’s the 200 where we see the strongest trends on the men’s side, although for the women it’s more in the 100. The winning time in the 200 has seen a big improvement though, Heidi Smithwick bringing it down to three seconds faster than in 2019, and she’s seeded fastest again this year. Umitcan Gures won the men’s 100 fly 4 years in a row and there was an obvious drop of without him in 2024, but Nicholas Finch has been 45.50 already this year and may challenge the 45-second barrier.

IM

Men’s

Women’s

Raunak Khosla, a multi-time Ivy’s IM Champion, was an NCAA finalist in the IM’s but the medleys as a whole have been fairly static. The 400 had lost some star power at the top but may get it back this year from Mitchell Schott – he’s been 1:42/3:40 so far this year. There’s been improvements in depth for the women, and a sizable time drop for the winning times. Last year’s double medley champion Dakota Tucker will have her work cut out this year with Eleanor Sun seeded right with her – these may drop even more.

RELAYS

Men’s

Women’s

Possibly the biggest surprise is that Harvard’s relays didn’t take much of a step back if one at all, after the graduation of Dean Farris. They were faster in three of the five in 2023 compared to 2022. The medleys and 200 free relays have seen the most consistent and biggest drops for both the men and women. The women’s 200 medley relay has been the most impressive: 2019’s winning time wouldn’t have made the podium last year, and the times for all 3 of the combinations have come down by well over a second.

IN SUMMARY

The Ivy League has had and still has its stars, but it’s building a competitive amount of depth compared to the Power conferences as well. Relays are one of the best indicators of a strong conference – if schools can put together teams of four that are improving, those swimmers are likely improving individually as well – and there have been some big improvements in these. The two or three-way fight for the conference crown should make this year even more competitive than before.