Ranking The 2025 Men’s NCAA Recruiting Classes: Honorable Mentions

The calendars have flipped to September, which means that Division I NCAA programs are gearing up for the start of the 2025-26 season. As always, we’ll rank in reverse order from #16 to #1. But before we get started, we’ve got a few honorable mentions.

See Also:

• Individual Recruit Rankings: Boys Final Standings

A few important notes on our rankings:

• The rankings listed are based on our Class of 2025 Re-Rank. “HM” refers to our honorable mentions and “BOTR” refers to our Best of the Rest section for top-tier recruits.
• Like most of our rankings, these placements are subjective. We base our team ranks on a number of factors: prospects’ incoming times are by far the main factor, but we also consider potential upside in the class, class size, relay impact, and team needs. Greater weight is placed on known success in short course yards, so foreign swimmers are slightly devalued based on the difficulty in converting long course times to short course production.
• Transfers are included, though they are weighed less than recruits who arrive with four seasons of eligibility.
• For the full list of all verbally committed athletes, click here. A big thank you to SwimSwam’s own Anne Lepesant for compiling that index – without it, rankings like these would be far less comprehensive.
• Some teams had not released a finalized 2025-26 team roster at the time these articles were published, meaning it’s possible we missed some names. Let us know in the comments below.

Best NCAA Swimming and Diving Recruiting Classes: Men’s Class of 2025

Wisconsin

Wisconsin has a small incoming class, but brings in two top recruits in Enzo Solitario and Drew Gaerthofner. Solitario will swell the freestyle and butterfly ranks, bringing 20.0/43.1/1:34.1 speed in the former and 47.7/1:45.0 in the latter, but also had a fantastic Junior Nationals where he went 49.7/1:48.6 in freestyle and 53.0/1:57.5 on fly, indicating that there is even more to come. Gaerthofner will give a boost to the breaststroke group with times of 53.9/1:56.6, and has a sneaky good 20.09 50 free. The Badgers also add Adam Graham, who has spent the past year training in Australia at Manly Swimming Club, who is a great addition to their backstroke ranks. He is 55.4/1:59.5 in long course, and brings 51.7 speed in the 100 free. Those three are joined by distance freestyler Declan Kelly and mid-distance freestyler Carter Jewell, leading to a well-balanced class despite its size.

Louisville

Nikita Sheremet, World Junior Record holder and champion in the 50 free, is the big pickup for them but it will remain to be seen how he adapts to yards. His conversion is an 18.87 – a big ask as a freshman – but he is likely to be competitive at the college level from the get go. Finley Conklin is a nice pick up for the breaststroke group, with bests of 53.5/1:57.9, and they add international swimmers Oscar Isberg and Szymon Misiak, both of whom are freestyle specialists. They are joined by backstroker Nate Thomas (48.17/1:43.64), IM specialist Owen Stevens (1:48.38/3:52.59) and breaststroker Ryder Hicks (54.97/1:58.21), who joins a training group including sophomore Jake Eccleston, a star of last season. They only have one transfer coming in this year, Max Hatcher from Texas, but with his mid-distance free (4:21/15:04) and IM (1:48/3:50) prowess he could be a big get for after the loss of Eduardo Moraes. Sprint freestylers Ryan Henderson (19.98/44.00) and Gavin Sheyda (20.85/44.98) also come in for the Cardinals as they restock in a big way after last year’s 14th-place finish at NCAAs.

Texas A&M

The Aggies bring in a pair of ranked recruits in #20 Alejandro Michelena and BOTR John Simmons, along with a pair of quality transfers in Daniil Pancerevas and Jack Madoch. Michelena will reinforce the fly group and brings in ‘C’ final-worthy times at both distances at SECs, while Simmons is a versatile sprinter across free, fly and backstroke (43.85/1:35.85 FR, 46.71 1BK, 47.30 1FL) who will have a big part to play on an 800 free relay that loses all four swimmers from last year. He will be joined on that relay by Pancerevas, who holds bests of 43.95/1:34.66 to go alongside a 1:45.31 200 IM that is just outside scoring at the conference level. Madoch is 19.48/43.63 on the sprint freestyles as well as 46.79 on the 100 fly, and will join a sprint group that saw great development last year with two swimmers under 19 seconds in the 50 free. Bucky Gettys will swell the distance freestyle ranks (4:19.26/1:13.05), Wesley Robinson the sprint freestyle (20.64/44.55/1:37.88), while AJ Robinson will add depth on IM (1:47.38/3:49.87), as A&M aim to remain on track after a couple of high-profile departures this summer.

Ohio State

Ohio State are headlined by a pair of Honorable Mention sprinters, who will help swell their ranks after they lose two of their three sub-19 50 freestylers this year. Ethan Reniewicki is the main act after dropping swims of 19.2/42.9 at the end of July, and both him and Mason Francis (19.6/43.5) should be able to contribute from the start, already both being in Big Ten scoring range. Transfers Jack Schuster and Rasmus Hanson, along with South African Ricky Lottering, will add even more depth to that freestyle group, with Schuster and Lottering also bringing some sprint fly chops. Isaac Fleig will reinforce a distance group that loses Charlie Clark this year, as he comes in from ASU, and is joined in that group by Gherman Prudnikau (4:22.14/15:13.10, 1:46.75 2IM) and Canadian swimmer Max Vorobiev. Versatile back/fly swimmers Cooper Burt, Austin Hickok and Aidan Levine will add depth, while backstroke specialist Rayburn Kohl (47.93/1:44.27) is already within scoring range at Big Tens.