Tennessee All-American Julia Mrozinski Secures Her NCAA Qualification at Last Chance

Tennessee Last Chance Meet

• February 24-25, 2023
• Alan Jones Aquatic Center, Knoxville, Tennessee
• Short Course Yards (25 yards), Prelims/Finals + Time Trials
• Results on Meet Mobile: “Last Chance Meet UTK”

The University of Tennessee’s Last Chance Meet kicked off Friday morning, with teams coming from around the region for a last-ditch effort at hitting NCAA qualifying times.

While athletes will have many more opportunities to qualify throughout the meet, only one swimmer picked up a likely-qualification for NCAAs in the first session on Friday morning: Tennessee’s Julia Mrozinski.

The German-born sophomore rejoined Tennessee in the spring semester after spending the fall at home. The 2022 SEC Champion in the 500 free wasn’t as good at this year’s meet on a short turnaround after rejoining the team, finishing 20th in 4:43.35.

But on Friday morning, she swam 4:40.22 in prelims, which puts her almost three seconds clear of the invite time for last year’s NCAA Championship meet.

With somewhere between 36 and 40 swimmers taken per race, and all of the 500 frees done at women’s conference championship meets, Mrozinski moves up to 21st in the nation, which puts her in lock territory for an NCAA Invite.

That gives them another potential scorer (she was 9th at NCAAs in the 500 last year) and saves them one of their relay-only slots (if they need it) for another swimmer.

A few others improved their status on Friday:

• Forest Webb from Virginia Tech swam 1:40.80 in the 200 back. That’s a .60 second drop, moving him from 30th in the NCAA to 21st. There’s a lot of men’s conference championship swimming left, but that should put him on the right side of the bubble heading into Pac-12s next week.
• Tennessee junior Elle Caldow swam a 1:45.13 in the 200 free, which dropped .72 seconds off her old season best. That improves her from 58th in the 200 free to 37th. With the Pac-12, and a number of Last Chance meets, left, that’s a precarious position (though there are a few swimmers ahead of her who probably won’t swim that race at NCAAs). So she’s squarely on the bubble, for now.

Finals and the evening time trials will pick up again at 6:00 PM.