MN’s Mackenzie Padington To Take NCAA Gap Year, Train For Canadian Trials

NCAA finalist Mackenzie Padington will be sitting out this coming college season for the University of Minnesota, instead training for a potential Olympic bid for Canada. Padington will be training at the High Performance Center – Victoria, which Swimming Canada announced today will have a new head coach in Brad Dingey.

Minnesota confirmed the news today, saying Padington will be taking an off-year to train for the Olympics. Padington finished 3rd at NCAAs in both the 1650 free and 500 free last year, and was Minnesota’s second-leading scorer with 32 individual points. Padington was also 37th in the 200 free and had a 1:44.9 split on Minnesota’s scoring 800 free relay.

Padington is coming off a great summer in which she won the 400-, 800- and 1500-meter frees at Canadian Trials in April. The 20-year-old qualified for the Canadian World Championships team, and competed in the 400 and 800 in Gwangju, Korea. Padington was 24th in the 400 and 18th in the 800.

Her season-bests rank 2nd (400), 1st (800) and 1st (1500) among Canadians last season.

Padington’s Top Times

  • 1500m free: 16:23.66
  • 800m free: 8:31.68
  • 400m free: 4:08.82
  • 200m free: 1:58.39
  • 1650y free: 15:47.16
  • 500y free: 4:35.21
  • 200y free: 1:44.23

Padington is the next in a long list of top athletes taking the college season off to focus on long course meters in the year leading up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. As of now, other reported redshirts, gap years, and/or deferrals include:

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Swim
5 years ago

Once again Canada going all in!

Bo Swims
Reply to  Swim
5 years ago

Trials dates are so close to NCAAs especially for the men.

Yep
Reply to  Bo Swims
5 years ago

One week later, usually

Superfan
5 years ago

Is she staying at Minnesota to train or going back to Canada to train?

Bo Swims
Reply to  Superfan
5 years ago

My guess is she’ll land in Toronto for the season. Her coach is being moved to the training centre there. The article says Victoria where she trained in the past but I think it’s more likely she’s going to stick with Ryan Mallette.

JP input is too short
5 years ago

Well I guess that probably changes the #8 ranking that just got published this morning, eh?

Backstrokebro
5 years ago

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but in a gap year she is leaving minnesota to go train somewhere in Canada for a year, as opposed to a redshirt, where the athlete would still attend the school for the year but not compete for the university

Articuno
Reply to  Backstrokebro
5 years ago

Although I don’t think she’d transfer, does this make that process “easier”?

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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