The Wisconsin Badgers are racing at the 2025 Texas Hall of Fame Invite this weekend, and they are swimming lights out, seeing massive drops across the board with their first year head coach Dr. Jack Brown.
In May, Brown was announced as the head coach, replacing Yuri Suguiyama who had held the position for seven years before taking a role as the USA Swimming National Team Senior Director and Coach.
Brown joined the program from the University of North Carolina and is making a huge impact for the Badgers team that was in a rough spot coming into the season.
On the women’s side, Wisconsin lost long-time backstroker and major NCAA point scorer Phoebe Bacon after she spent five years leading the team. They finished 12th at the 2025 NCAAs, their highest finish since 2011 with 45 of their 70 individual points coming from Bacon’s performances.
On the men’s side, the Badgers finished 22nd with 28 points, 14 from junior Dominik Mark Torok and 14 from relays.
We are only a month-and-a-half into the season, and so far the team is performing very well. They started making headlines earlier this month when sophomore Maggie Wanezek blasted a massive 50.30 in the women’s 100 backstroke at a dual meet to move up to the 3rd fastest swimmer in the country so far this season. Her time was a six tenth drop from her previous best of 50.96 that she swam at the same meet in 2024.
What is more notable than the drop, though, is that Wanezek had stagnated in the event. In 2022 she swam 50.13 at the NCSA Spring Championships, meaning in three years she dropped just over a tenth of a second before she swam her 50.30.
She has been having a strong meet so far at the Hall of Fame Invite, dropping a tenth in her 50 backstroke yesterday to split 23.41 on the opening 50, more than four tenths faster than the 23.85 she swam leading off Wisconsin’s medley at last year’s NCAA Championships.
Today, she followed up that performance with a massive drop in the women’s 200 freestyle. She swam 1:44.28 to drop three seconds from her previous best of 1:47.43 which she swam in March of 2023. In finals, she dropped another five hundredths to swim 1:44.23 and finish 5th overall.
She also split a massive 21.33 on the Badgers’ 3rd place 200 free relay, one of the fastest splits in the field with only Stanford’s Torri Huske coming in faster.
Her sister Abby Wanezek also saw a significant improvement, swimming 1:43.74 in the prelims of the 200 free, which was a two-second drop from the 1:45.48 she swam at the 2025 Big Ten championships. Wanezek has never swum an individual event at NCAAs, and while there are no sure things with the new qualification model, her time is exactly a second faster than the 1:44.74 that earned the last invite last year.
Wisconsin also has the strongest women’s breaststroke group in the Big Ten. Brooke Corrigan broke 1:00 for the first time in this morning’s prelims, touching in 59.95 to qualify 6th overall. This would have been the 2nd fastest time in the conference before midseasons. She went faster in the final, touching in 59.80.
Joining her at the top of the group are Hazal Ozkan, who was tied for 5th in the conference, Catherine Hughes, who is 7th, and Bridget McGann, who is 11th coming into this meet. McGann and Hughes both improved from their season best times in the ‘B’ final with McGann swimming a new personal best 1:00.23.
The women aren’t the only ones improving. On the men’s side Luukas Vainio set a new personal best in the men’s 200 freestyle, dropping a full second in prelims to touch in 1:33.44 before swimming 1:32.28 in the final to drop even more time. This marked his first best time in more than a year in the event with his previous best coming in at 1:34.23 from March of 2024.
They also had freshman Enzo Solitario, who swam 1:33.77 to drop half a second in prelims and dropped more to 1:33.16 in finals. His previous best stood at 1:34.18 from the Louisiana High School State Meet last November.
Ben Wiegand dropped half a second in the 100 breaststroke, swimming 52.27 to qualify 8th for a very fast final. In the final, he swam 51.83 to total more than a second dropped from the 52.87 he swam at last year’s Big Ten Championships.
The men’s distance swimmers are also seeing improvement with Yoav Romano dropping 10 seconds in the 1650 on the first night, swimming 14:54.42 to drop from the 15:04.30 he swam at last year’s Hall of Fame Invite.
There are still two days left in the Invite with more events and chances to drop time still to come.
Love to see it. Yuri overrated asf 🤡
Definitely big gains for the strokes/mid distance folks. Sprinters seem to be fairing just fine, but hopefully with more rest will see equal improvement rates.
Any word on why Torepe-Ormsby isn’t competing this weekend?
Matt Bowe has been doing this for three years at Michigan and can’t get a peep out of SwimSwam, but Wisconsin comes to Austin and voila. Ain’t it something?
Kol Hakovod Yoav !!!
Now write the one about teams who aren’t doing great, keep parity for readers and potential athletes deciding where to go to school.
OK boss!
Same thing happend at UNC clearly this jack brown has a insight into the sport we have yet to see from other coaches. Wish I could say the same for my team, seems to be all downhill in Minneapolis…
or it just different type of training regime bringing new stimulation to bodies, long time results will tells us more
Yes on the first part, no on the second part
list the competent coaches at MN.
Jeff left, Mike followed and Kelly hasn’t been one for a long time, he makes swimmers cry for the wrong reasons.
Love to see improvements. Hopefully it continues!
The Best Is Yet To Come
ON WISCONSIN!
Dude!!? These guys are moving like crazy. Makes you wonder what kinda stuff the old guys had em doing. This team has potential
The Best Is Yet To Come
ON WISCONSIN!
In Yuri’s defense, the Wisconsin women would often deliver at the end of the year, especially at NCAAs. In recent years, UNC has not had consistent time drops at ACCs and NCAAs.