By Anya Pelshaw on SwimSwam
September begins this Tuesday and the NCAA season will begin later in the month. With the season just around the corner, SwimSwam has been busy ranking the recruiting classes and previewing the top teams for the upcoming season.
As we post articles, we will update our compendium so you can quickly and easily access everything.
Top 12 Programs Preview
Women’s Top 12 Men’s Top 12 Program 2026 NCAA Score Stars (★) Out of 40 Program 2026 NCAA Score Stars (★) Out of 40 1 Virginia 589 1 Texas 445.5 2 Stanford 380.5 2 Florida 416 3 Texas 376.5 3 Indiana 351 4 Cal 303 4 Arizona State 328 5 Tennessee 301.5 5 Tennessee 272 6 Michigan 296 6 NC State 258.5 7 Indiana 258 7 Cal 231 8 Louisville 201.5 8 Michigan 220 9 NC State 195.5 9 Virginia 192 10 Florida 125.5 10 Stanford 136 11 Alabama 100.5 11 Virginia Tech 86 12 Ohio State 87 16.5 12 Louisville 82Grading Criteria
Over the years, we’ve gone back and forth on how to project points, ranging from largely subjective rankings to more data-based grading criteria based on ‘projected returning points.’ We like being as objective as possible, but we’re going to stick with the approach we’ve adopted post-COVID. The “stars” will rely heavily on what swimmers actually did last year, but we’ll also give credit to returning swimmers or freshmen who have posted times that would have scored last year.
Since we only profile the top 12 teams in this format, our grades are designed with that range in mind. In the grand scheme of college swimming and compared to all other college programs, top 12 NCAA programs would pretty much all grade well across the board. But in the interest of making these previews informative, our grading scale is tough – designed to show the tiers between the good stroke groups, the great ones, and the 2015 Texas fly group types.
5 star (★★★★★) – a rare, elite NCAA group projected to score 25+ points per event 4 star (★★★★) – a very, very good NCAA group projected to score 15-24 points per event 3 star (★★★) – a good NCAA group projected to score 5-14 points per event 2 star (★★) – a solid NCAA group projected to score 1-4 points per event 1 star (★) – an NCAA group that is projected to score no points per event, though that doesn’t mean it’s without potential scorers – they’ll just need to leapfrog some swimmers ahead of them to do itWe’ll grade each event discipline: sprint free (which we define to include all the relay-distance freestyle events, so 50, 100 and 200), distance free, IM, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly and diving. Use these grades as a jumping-off point for discussion, rather than a reason to be angry.
Also, keep in mind that we are publishing many of these previews before teams have posted finalized rosters. We’re making our assessments based on the best information we have available at the time of publication, but we reserve the right to make changes after publication based on any new information that may emerge regarding rosters. If that does happen, we’ll make certain to note the change.
The final note is that we are not including athletes who graduated last spring after exhausting their college eligibility despite ongoing lawsuits against the NCAA regarding the new “Five-for-Five” rule.
Top Recruiting Classes
Women’s Programs Men’s Programs 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)A few important notes on our rankings:
The rankings listed are based on our Class of 2026 Re-Rank. “HM” refers to our honorable mentions and “BOTR” refers to our Best of the Rest section for top-tier recruits. Like most of our rankings, these placements are subjective. We base our team ranks on a number of factors: prospects’ incoming times are by far the main factor, but we also consider potential upside in the class, class size, relay impact, and team needs. Greater weight is placed on known success in short course yards, so foreign swimmers are slightly devalued based on the difficulty in converting long course times to short course production. Transfers are included, though they are weighed less than recruits who arrive with four seasons of eligibility. For the full list of all verbally committed athletes, click here. A big thank you to SwimSwam’s own Anne Lepesant for compiling that index – without it, rankings like these would be far less comprehensive. Some teams had not released a finalized 2026-27 team roster at the time these articles were published, meaning it’s possible we missed some names. Let us know in the comments below.Individual Recruit Ranks
Girls
Ranks As Seniors (from May 2026) Ranks As Juniors (from August 2025) Ranks As Sophomores (from August 2024)Boys
Ranks As Seniors (from June 2026) Ranks As Juniors (from August 2025) Ranks As Sophomores (from August 2024)Read the full story on SwimSwam: 2026-2027 NCAA Division I College Preview Compendium
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