UAAs, Wednesday and Thursday

We should know better than try to cover both meets

photo credit: Eugene Soh

When it comes to covering this meet as a two-team horse race, the UAAs are not as compliant as the NCACs. Pressed for time, we would love to restrict our attention to the NYU women challenging for the first non-Emory women’s UAA title in decades, or the Emory men’s ongoing title defense, made all the more dramatic by the absence of Crow Thorsen.¹

But we cannot do that, at least not on the men’s side, because so far the University of Chicago may be the most impressive men’s team at this meet. Chicago emerged from 1 Meter diving with a lead over both Emory and NYU. They then won the men’s 200 Free Relay in BOTH the A and B finals. We don’t exactly trust the timing splits, but it looks like heroic efforts all around. Both graduate transfers - Ben Catton formerly of Hope and Daniel Brooks formerly of Kenyon - made major contributions. And there was this appealing symmetry - Chicago benefited from two brilliant anchor legs: the A final was anchored by veteran Sebastian Vernhes, and the B final anchored by the first-year recruit - John Butler - who may be on track to be the relay anchor for years to come.

We are going to bracket Chicago for one more day, and if they are still close by the end of Friday, we will have to start covering in much more detail what will be a pretty amazing upset.

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The NYU women started Thursday morning with a 14 point lead over Emory, earned by winning both the A and B finals of the 800 Free relay the night before.

In women’s 3 Meter diving, Emory and NYU each had three divers, but between the two teams only Ren Watt of Emory made the A final. Emory emerged from the event +10 points, drawing within four points of NYU.

The women’s 200 Free relay was custom made for Kaley McIntyre fireworks and she took the second leg out and back in 21.95. You probably could guess that was more than a second faster than everyone else.

500 Free

The women’s 500 Free was remarkably even, with four NYU swimmers and four Emory swimmers in the A final. Caitlin Marshall took the win—congratulations to her. While both teams pulled more than 100 points from this heat, NYU edged out Emory by three points due to rank order of finish. In the B final, both teams earned over 30 points, again with a slight NYU advantage. However, the decisive heat turned out to be the C final, where Emory’s numbers advantage already put this event in their favor.

The men’s 500 Free featured a major upset as Emory first-year Ben Pritchard defeated NYU’s veteran distance swimmer, Connor Vincent. These two will likely meet again at Nationals next month. NYU had the biggest individual result and more A finalists, but Emory’s depth across all finals made the difference. This was the event where Emory began to erase the lead NYU had built in diving.

200 IM

The women’s 200 IM was a case study in how depth and order of finish interact in scoring, and how in a meet like UAAs, when contending teams have athletes in all three finals, the event needs to be looked at in a time series. Here is what we mean.

The A final featured three swimmers from each team, with Emory first-year Caitlin Crysel taking the win over NYU’s Calista Lynch, a championship finalist at the 2024 Nationals. Emory claimed three of the top five spots, creating an impression of dominance.

But the significance of that result is more contingent than it seems. Rewinding to the earlier heats, the B final saw NYU’s two swimmers, Ella Romberg and Hope Xayaveth, face off against Emory’s lone entry, Maren McDonald. Because NYU had an extra swimmer in this heat, Ms. Xayaveth’s 15th-place finish effectively outweighed the advantage Emory would gain in the A final.

Even that, however, does not tell the full story. Going back further to the C final, Emory’s two-to-one advantage put NYU in a deficit before the B final even began. NYU’s strong showing in the B final wasn’t about extending a lead—it was just enough to pull them back to even.

For the men, Brayden Morford is back, winning events. He won this one convincingly. What we just talked about with the women’s 200 IM and the time series, that is a thing with the men as well.

Amusingly they wound up with the same number of points from this event.

Although with NYU first-year Max Nechydyuk finishing 2nd and senior Jaeden Yburan finishing third, we imagine that in the moment it felt like something better than break-even.

In the women’s 50 Free…look, you understand that if Kaley McIntyre had not won this event, we would have led with that, right? OK. Cool.

Anyway, this event was a godsend for Emory. Like, this meet was nearly break even until this event. In this case, only the A and B finals were in play. Ms. McIntyre was NYU’s sole representative in the A final. She of course maximized the points haul by winning. But head-count comes before order of finish and Emory had two athletes - Ava Kennedy and Natalie Boorjian - in this event, so in terms of points this was a clear Emory win. The B final was even at three athletes each for Emory and NYU, and Emory just grabbed better finishes, especially first-year Louisa Wendt, who won the B final.

Those Emory first-years have been a huge factor, for the whole division, all season long.

For the men, Emory had a head count advantage in the C and B finals that more than compensated for NYU’s head-count and order of finish advantages in the A final. What did Marx say, ‘history weighs like a nightmare on the mind of the living’? Something like that. Emory’s advantages in the C and B finals shaped the meaning of the A final before the strobe ever flashed.

Nice swims by Ajay Watanakun, Greg Wehbe, and Dylan Yin.

Yeah, we know, we see it too. Chicago everywhere you look.

The day ended with a new conference record 400 Medley Relay from NYU.

The NYU points advantage from this relay was mitigated somewhat by a really nice relay from Emory in the B final.

Here is how it looked at the end of the day.

We will keep trying to cover this meet contemporaneously, but we don’t know if we can manage it along with covering NCACs. We will try. We ask in advance for your patience.

1. Last year’s national champion in 400 IM, and by SRS one of the most valuable athletes in Division III swimming. Not to mention…it’s Crow Thorsen. As unhinged as we are about Division III swimming over here at d3so, even we like swimming less when Crow Thorsen is not involved.