OSU Freshmen Account For Nearly A Third Of Team’s Individual Points

The Ohio State women had a lot to celebrate this weekend. In their home pool, they took back the B1G trophy from Indiana, their fifth in six years.

Beyond the immediate gratification of a championship title, however, the Buckeyes made a statement about their talent for years to come. That’s because nearly a third of the individual points from their conference title came from first years.

A team of seven OSU freshmen – Sienna Angove, Rachel Bockrath, Mila Nikanorov, Erin Little, Delia Lloyd, Mia Prusiecki, and Maria Ramos Najji – combined for a total of 341 of the team’s total 1049.5 individual points (32.5%). They were the second highest scoring class of the meet, topped only by the Indiana seniors at 426. See Swimswam’s full data breakdown of the Women’s B1G Championships here.

When thinking about the 32.5% figure, keep in mind that there are five classes of swimmers including fifth years.

This figure becomes even more impressive when you consider that the combined Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, USC, Minnesota freshmen points sum to 364 – just 23 more than Ohio State alone.

Zooming out, this is the highest percentage for the freshmen of any top three finisher team, men or women, across all Power Four conferences this weekend. The next closest was the Louisville women, whose freshmen accounted for 28.9% of all individual Cardinal points.

The Ohio State freshmen earned all of these feats on outstanding depth. They only won one event (Sienna Angrove in the 400 IM). However, the squad of seven had seven A-final and nine B-final appearances. Their 341 point total means that they were averaging roughly 16.24 points, or 10th-11th place, in each event.

The Buckeye freshmen also played a crucial role in relays. Ohio State’s 800 freestyle relay consisted entirely of freshmen, while the 400 free relay was three for four class of 2028.

“They’re unbelievably coachable,” said Ohio State’s Director of Swimming & Diving, Bill Dorenkott about his Class of 2028. “[Before,] I said freshmen don’t win championships and I was wrong.”

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