By Anya Pelshaw on SwimSwam
2026 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships
Wednesday, March 18 – Saturday, March 21, 2026 McAuley Aquatic Center, Atlanta, GA Defending Champions: Virginia (5x) Championship Central Preview Index Psych Sheet Live Stream Live ResultsIndiana State’s Grace Cummings made history in numerous ways for the program on Wednesday as she swam to a 15th place finish in the women’s 1650 freestyle touching in a 16:08.21, dropping nine seconds off her seed time. Today’s swim was only her 3rd 1650 free in her career.
Cummings became the first swimmer to ever qualify for NCAAs for Indiana State with her invite, and now became the first swimmer to score at NCAAs. The program was only added less than 10 years ago as they first competed in the 2016-2017 season.
Cummings is finishing up her freshman season with Indiana State after arriving from Great Britain. Her first 1650 free came at midseason when she swam a 16:23.09. Last month at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships, she swam to a 16:17.25. That swim booked her ticket to the 2026 NCAA Championships as she was below the automatic qualifying standard and also was a conference champion. Even being a conference champion, Cummings fell on line 36, which usually would have made NCAAs as the line for the women’s meet typically fell around lines 37-41.
Cummings spoke of the swim being her 3rd 1650 free ever saying, “I’ve definitely learned a lot from the past two miles, especially how I can pace myself and I’ve learned not to go out as fast as I did on the first mile. So if I build through it, I can effectively get to wherever I need to be. They’ve taught me ideas through like pre race prep and then how I can handle cooldowns after just to maximize the best of my ability.”
She also spoke of how she is excited for the future, “I’m definitely excited for the future to see how I progress because seeing this is only my third mile. I’m just excited for what me and Josh can do in training to enable the best performance during races and I’m just excited to see how we can grow as a team and individually during the future.”
Head Coach Josh Christensen spoke on the numerous benefits of the addition of automatic qualifiers including from the recruiting perspective. “Once the AQ thing kind of got set, we’ve got a pretty strong distance group and I thought we had definitely had a shot at getting somebody to the meet this year. So that was cool. And I mean, I know there’s a lot of opinions on on that and everything. I actually think she was line 36. I think she actually would have made it with the other selection process. So, you know, whatever on that.”
“But I think the AQ things are really good thing. I think the women’s actually worked about the way it should. I think it provides some really cool opportunities and you know, I think it’ll, it’ll change some things recruiting wise and I think it can add to this meet with with seeing some different schools do things. Like I said, whether she would have made it or not, either way, whatever. But good example here of just somebody from a smaller school coming in and, you know, putting together a scoring level swim.”
Christensen also spoke on what it meant to have someone at NCAAs, becoming the first swimmer and scorer ever at the national level. “Huge for our program. First ever NCAA qualifier. It is a big deal, obviously. Full team effort too, and I think she would say to me that she’s trained with some great training partners [and] had people that have supported her. She had teammates that drove all the way out here to watch her swim today and everything. So just a cool moment for our program, and for Grace to get to this point. Then showing up here and and backing it up a little bit and in a pretty big way is pretty neat as well.”
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