By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
Hello college swimming fans — welcome back for another NCAA digest. Midseason invite season is well and truly upon us now. This week, many of the league’s top teams are in action across the country between the Georgia Fall Invite, Texas Hall of Fame Invite, Ohio State Fall Invite, the Wolfpack Elite GAC Invite, and the Gamecock Invite, to name a few. And oh yeah, there’s the CSCAA Power 4 Dual Meet Challenge as well.
Some of those invites have already begun (and made some major headlines already) but for simplicity’s sake, we’re going to save all of this week’s midseason invite action until next week’s digest. With many teams gearing up for invitational action, the last seven days were a bit quieter on the dual meet front, but there were still plenty of headlines.
Let’s get into it.
Midseason Week One
The Power Four swimming invites start in earnest this week, but our first invites are actually already in the books. SIU dominated its own A3 Performance Invite, winning the majority of events. Last year’s breakout, Olivia Herron, is already off to a solid start this year. She won the 100 breaststroke (1:00.30), 200 breaststroke (2:09.09), and 200 IM (1:58.11) at the meet in season-best efforts. She also helped the Salukis win multiple relays, including the 200 medley (27.64 50 breast split), and 800 freestyle (1:52.94 split).
New CSCAA Poll Drops
Division I
It’s status quo at the top of the November Division I CSCAA rankings as the Virginia women and the Texas men still hold 1st place in their respective rankings. The Cavalier women dominated at their two dual meets last month, outscoring the Gators 224-127 and the Tar Heels 203-90. The Texas women maintained their hold on second place after picking up two dual meet wins last month as well (versus Alabama and Tennessee). Courtesy of a 4-0 start, the Louisville Cardinals have moved up from 7th to 3rd, bumping the Stanford Cardinal to 4th by 17 points. There’s a 30-point gap between Stanford and the 5th place NC State Wolfpack.
Notably, LSU rose from 21st to 11th after an 8-0 start to the season, while the 4-0 South Carolina women only moved up to 17th after a couple of historic dual meet wins last month.
Hubert Kos, one of the Longhorn’s biggest stars, has yet to race in an official NCAA meet this season but that’s no problem for Texas, which earned a pair of easy wins against Alabama and Tennessee to maintain its hold on the top spot in the poll. Four Texas swimmers are currently ranked top three in the country in at least two events so far this season.
But behind Texas’ grip on the top spot there have been some shake ups. Arizona State is on a tear this fall, propelling them ahead of Indiana for the 2nd spot. Indiana sits 3rd and Florida maintained its 4th place rank, but the Louisville men matched the Cardinal women and moved from 12th to 5th following wins against Tennessee, Auburn, Kentucky, and Notre Dame in the last month. Louisville was the only team to break into the top 10 for the first time this season in the men’s rankings, while Arizona and Northwestern moved into the top 25 after being unranked to start the season.
Division II
It is a tight race at the top of the Division II men’s CSCAA standings, with Drury holding the #1 spot over Tampa by a single vote. Drury has not raced any dual meets since last month but did win the Drury Invite and finished fourth of five teams at the SMU Classic. Drury and Tampa seem set for another close race at the NCAA Championships; last year, Drury came out on top before their title was vacated due to a positive test for elevated levels of caffeine.
The top four teams remain the same from last month with Indianapolis and Grand Valley following behind Drury and Tampa. But on the women’s side, the three-time defending NCAA DII champions Nova Southeastern have jumped from fourth to first. The Sharks beat the Tampa women by just five points to kick off the month and now sit 8-2 in dual meets, likely a major factor in why they took the top spot in the November ranking by just two votes. There’s a close race on for third as well—Drury holds that ranking by just a point over Grand Valley, which maintained its 4th place spot. Colorado Mesa is 5th, just two points behind Drury and the whole top five is separated by just 27 votes.
Division III
Emory sits atop the women’s and men’s Division III rankings for November. It’s a move up for both teams; the women were third last month and the men were second. After beating Division I opponent Queens (NC) and Sewanee, the Emory women have moved to 2-1 on the season. NYU dropped to second by 11 points after holding the top spot in October. They’re followed by Kenyon, which has a 4-2 record, then Denison, and defending NCAA champions MIT round out the top five.
Meanwhile, while the Emory men dropped their meets against Queens (NC) and Georgia Tech, but still moved up to first in the men’s rankings. There was much more movement in this month’s men’s rankings than the women’s. Both Emory and Chicago leapfrogged October’s first ranked team, defending NCAA champions Denison. Behind them, Carnegie Mellon broke into the top 5 teams at 4th while Kenyon stayed 5th. Further down the standings, Pomona-Pitzer jumped from 19th to 9th), and five new teams were on the rankings after being unranked last month.
NCAA Reaches Settlement With Volunteer Coaches
The NCAA has agreed to pay $303 million over three years to settle a class action lawsuit brought by volunteer coaches. The lawsuit, which represents 7,700 volunteer NCAA coaches alleges the league engaged in illegal wage fixing under a role that prohibited schools from paying them. The settlement is still pending court approval but according to ESPN, each coach will receive an approximate $39,200 before expenses and fees, though school, sport, and years worked will all factor into an individual’s compensation.
The class includes any volunteer coach who worked for a Division I athletic program other than baseball at any point from March 17, 2019 to June 20, 2023. Coaches who fit that description can go to ncaavolunteercoachlawsuit.com for updates on the case.
Quick Hits
Ryan Martines has been hired as head coach of the newly reinstated Concordia University Irvine’s women’s swimming and diving team. In mid-August, nine female student athletes filed a sex discrimination class action lawsuit against the school after it eliminated four athletic programs. Last month, a California judge issued an order barring CUI from eliminating the women’s swim team (and all women’s varsity teams) “for the duration of this case or until further order of this court.” The CSCAA has revealed the bracket for its inaugural Dual Meet Challenge. The four participating teams—Virginia, Michigan, Tennessee, and Arizona State—have been seeded into a four-team double elimination bracket based on their relative CSCAA rankings. After a strong summer in long-course, Jack Wilkening raced for Michigan for the first time this season. Wilkening missed Michigan’s earlier meets due to undisclosed medical reasons. In his season debut, he won the 100 backstroke (48.29) and led off Michigan’s winning 200 medley relay (21.77 back) as Michigan beat Oakland and Pitt. Ivy League action stayed red hot this past week as the Princeton men broke three school records, the Yale men broke five Columbia pool records in their win over the Lions last weekend, and the Harvard vs. Dartmouth dual saw nine pool records broken across the women’s and men’s meets. The Harvard women improved to a 3-0 Ivy League record and jumped ahead of Princeton for the top spot in the women’s Ivy League Dual Meet Showdown standings. The Princeton men are also 3-0 and held onto 1st place ahead of a tie for second between Harvard and Yale.Read the full story on SwimSwam: 2025-26 NCAA Digest: It’s Time For Midseason Invites
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