Notre Dame Confirms That Men’s Swimming Will Resume in 2025-2026 Season After Team Suspension

Notre Dame has confirmed that the men’s swimming team will return to competition in 2025-2026 after a year long ban that resulted from an investigation into an intra-team gambling scheme. The official statement on the programs return will come as a relief to Notre Dame faithful, as the original term of the suspension was “at least one academic year,” with some fearing that the program might not return at all.

“Over the course of the last year, our men’s swimming team has taken the critical and necessary steps to correct the issues that led to the suspension of the program this past summer,” said Notre Dame’s athletics director Pete Bevacqua. “As a result, we have made the determination that our men’s swimming team will return to full competition next season. While we have all learned some difficult lessons through this process, we are confident that this team is set up for success in the future.”

The team will return without their best swimmer, Olympian Chris Guiliano, the 2024 ACC Swimmer of the Year who transferred and is using his final season of eligibility this semester at the University of Texas.

The suspension of the men’s swimming team halted a lot of upward momentum for the program. in 2024, they finished 2nd at the ACC Championships, and in consecutive seasons they had their best-ever NCAA Championship meet finishes: 18th in 2023 and 10th in 2024. Both of those results for head coach Chris Lindauer‘s squad came even without many star recruits flooding into the program.

Just after U.S. Olympic Trials in June, the school announced that the law firm, Ropes & Gray LLP to conduct an external review after “potential issues with the culture” of the team. Sources have told SwimSwam that the investigation has been ongoing at least since January and authorities were allegedly monitoring activity during US Olympic Trials.

The review found that gambling was an occurrence for most of the team members that were set to return for this upcoming season. Swimmers place “over/under” lines on swims at meets. In addition to betting on swimming, some of the athletes participated in betting on other sports such as the NCAA March Madness tournaments.

NCAA athletes are forbidden to bet on any sport that is sponsored by the NCAA, including the professional level of sports like basketball and football that the NCAA supports.

At the time, Bevacqu said that besides the gambling, an external investigation “confirmed and expanded on our initial concerns about a deeply embedded team culture dismissive of Notre Dame’s standards for student-athletes, including our expectation that they treat one another with dignity and respect.

At the time, Bevacqu said that the coaching staff participated in and fully cooperated with all aspects of the external review. The review found that the staff was not aware of gambling or the scope and extent of other troubling behaviors because team members effectively concealed such behaviors from the coaches and staff through concerted efforts. According to the review, when the staff became aware of certain isolated incidents of unacceptable conduct, they treated them seriously and professionally. We appreciate the continued service of the staff to our women’s swimming and diving programs and our men’s diving program during these difficult times.”

The women’s swimming & diving team and men’s diving team were not involved and were allowed to continue competing. The men’s team sent a single diver to the ACC Championships, junior Ben Nguyen, who finished as high as 4th in platform. That placed Notre Dame 15th out of 15 teams in the overall standings.

While the team was not allowed to participate in official competition, nine newcomers (seven freshmen and two 5th year transfers) competed at a handful of USA Swimming meets throughout the season.

There are still questions about what the Notre Dame roster might look like next season after the year away. Some swimmers face individual sanctions depending on their determined role in the gambling, while others may transfer or decide not to continue swimming in college.