2025 Men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships
- March 26-29, 2025
- Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatics Center, Federal Way, Washington
- Short Course Yards (25 yards)
- Start Times: Prelims: 10 AM ׀ Finals: 6 PM (Pacific Daylight Time)
- Psych Sheet
- Eligible Relays
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- Live Results
- Live Recaps
Day two of the men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships has concluded, and we gave a lot of attention to the swimmers who were winning their events in huge ways. It’s NCAAs though, and the top-three swimmers are not the only ones who are swimming fast.
Here are some of the excellent swims and large time drops from people who maybe weren’t getting a ton of attention.
Noah Millard won the very first heat of the evening for Yale, the men’s 500 freestyle ‘B’ final in 4:08.69. This wasn’t a best time for him, coming in almost exactly a second off the 4:07.68 mark he set at Ivies last month. It was, however, the first time that Yale has scored any points since 2017 when Kei Hyogo finished 16th in the 1650 free. Millard still has the 200 and 1650 freestyle events later this meet, and he is seeded to score in both events.
Also in the 500 free ‘B’ final was USC sophomore Krzysztof Chmielewski, who finished 13th in 4:12.05. This was almost two seconds off his prelims time of 4:10.62 that qualified him 11th for the final. It was, however, still faster than his season best and personal best times. This season Chmielewski hadn’t been faster than 4:16.25, which he swam at the Texas Hall of Fame Invite in November. His previous best time came from the 2023 iteration of the meet, where he swam 4:13.84, making his swim this morning a three second drop from his previous best time.
UNC junior Louis Dramm finished 11th in the 200 IM, touching in 1:40.92, which was almost a second faster than his previous best and school record time of 1:41.84 that he set back in November. It also marks almost two seconds dropped from his pre-season best time of 1:42.86 that he went at last year’s NCAA Championships where he finished 24th overall.
There were a number of fast 50 freestyles, but one of the most impressive came from Florida freshman Alexander Painter who won the ‘B’ final in 18.60 which was more than two tenths faster than his previous best time of 18.82. Painter has been huge in filling spots on Florida’s roster this year.
Indiana has been the subject of a lot of our attention the last few days as they try to massively outperform their seed and move up the leaderboard, but we haven’t said anything about sophomore Dylan Smiley. Smiley was the anchor leg of their 200 free relay tonight, splitting 18.54 to help the Hoosiers pick up 24 points in 7th place, 10 more points than they were supposed to. Smiley has had a lot of improvement this year, and earned his way to the NCAA Championships thanks to his 24th seed in the 100 freestyle. Last year, Smiley didn’t make Indiana’s scoring team at the Big Ten Championships, swimming all of his events exhibition.
Another impressive relay performance came from ASU junior Tommy Palmer, who swam the 2nd leg of the Sun Devil’s 200 freestyle relay. He came in at 18.17, the 2nd fastest split on his relay only after Jonny Kulow. The fastest he had been before this was an 18.33, which he swam at last year’s ACC Championships. Only three people were faster than him tonight.
Finally, Florida senior Julian Smith also had a strong relay performance, swimming 18.25 on the 2nd leg. He doesn’t always swim this relay, but at last year’s NCAA Championships, he split 18.51 on this relay, marking a more than two tenth drop in his 50. He also had the 6th fastest time in the field, 4th fastest from a relay start.
