Social Kick

NCAA 200 breaststroke champion Lucy Bell, a Stanford junior, didn’t even swim that event she ultimately won when the season began.

While one of the best individual medley swimmers in the country, driven by a strong breaststroke leg, her “3rd event” at NCAAs had usually been the 200 butterfly. But Lucy’s intuition told her to give breaststroke a try so she asked her coaches, got a chance, and on her first attempt put up the fastest time in the country to that point of the season. She would go on to drop time over and over again, ultimate...

The 2025 college swimming season was a wild one, and to chat about women’s swimming and put a bow on the year that was, we’re joined by Texas stud freshman Piper Enge and Indiana mega point scorer Miranda Grana to talk all things swimming. 

Piper finaled in the 100 breaststroke (5th) at her first ever NCAAs as a freshman and swam short course best times this year, following up on her World Championships appearance in 2024. Texas finished 3rd in the team race following a tight battle with Stanford for 2nd. 

Miranda Grana sc...

3rd Annual Men’s NCAA Championship Recap Show featuring Will Modglin (Texas), Jonny Marshall (Florida) and Yamoto Okadome (Cal).

The dust settled another Texas vs. Cal title race with Texas taking the crown, some of the up and coming stars from the meet sat down for a cross-team chat about the meet and college swimming. Will Modglin scored 23 individual points, highlighted by a team NCAA championship for the longhorns and 3 A final appearance. Modglin had ups and downs, as he was on the national champion 200 medley relay, due to a Florida false start. Modglin had his own di...

As a 5th year, even Jassen Yep didn’t think winning an NCAA Swimming title was possible until he touched the wall in the 200 breast. After touching, Jassen Yep let out raw emotion and excitement, resulting in a legendary swimming celly. Although it seems like Yep was an overnight success, there was a lot of hard work behind this win. Yep was an accomplished high school swimmer in California, representing Archbishop Mitty and swimming at PEAK with elite club coach Abi Liu. In high school, he went a 1:57 in the 200 breast to earn a small scholarship at Indiana. At In...

In this special NCAA Swimming recap episode, the Social Kick crew recaps the most memorable moments of 2024-2025 in NCAA swimming season. We discuss the best individual swims (Walsh’s 46.97 100 fly, Crooks’ 39.83 100 free and many more), the overall environment of women’s and men’s championship meets, and rumors around the pool deck. Join us for a lively and insightful discussion as we reflect on another great year of NCAA swimming filled with incredible swims, unforgettable moments and a few drinks. 

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Iona Anderson is a teenage Australian Olympian and one of the best backstrokers in the world. 5th at her first Olympics individually, she came home with silver and bronze medals for her relay efforts in Paris. A native of Perth, West Australia, Iona grew up focusing primarily on gymnastics and didn’t even start swimming until age 12, so her rise to be among the elites happened quickly.

Perhaps this success in the pool comes from a short term focus, not being distracted by the potential she has down the road as Iona is simply focused on this se...

The best kicker in college swimming

Quintin McCarty, the 2025 ACC 50 freestyle champion, could be looking to sign NIL deals in two sports if the Wolfpack football staff needs any help in the kicking game. While swimmers are getting more athletic every year, we don’t often hear about swimmers with hobbies that could potentially unlock legitimate opportunities in other sports. Turns out, Quintin is pretty dangerous with the right leg. The takeaway: high performers enjoy the process of trying, failing, learning, repeating - and this might apply to their primary field (swimming) or any other act...

Cal Poly just had its swimming & diving program cut. No other sport at the school was cut. The school president says it will take $25 million to reinstate the program. Current Cal Poly swimmers Jen Reiter and Sabrina Bell joined us to share about the situation they find themselves in, how it came to this, and to ask for help. While scholarships across the nation are being slashed, cutting entire programs is not what the sport needs. Plus, San Luis Obispo is awesome. The facilities are great (2x 50m pools). The team had a good year under interim staff. Would...

Chlorinated Claire Curzan comes clean about crushing kicks and coaches tricks. In her first year competing for UVA, Claire Curzan, an Olympic medalist and World Champion looks to be on peak form heading into the college championship season. Already an NCAA champion from her freshman season at Stanford, College Claire picked up right where she left off, breaking the NCAA record in the 200 backstroke in-season, building excitement for what may come at her first ACCs.

The machine at Virginia keeps rolling.

If you bought $100 of Chris Guiliano stock in ~2021 and held onto it, you’d be a very rich person right now. The man of many freestyle talents has been on a rapid rise dropping chunks of time like he’s 10 years old en route to securing 3 individual spots on the Olympic team last summer in the 50-100-200, the first U.S. man to do so since the legend Matt Biondi. Under the radar, Chris developed at Notre Dame, but following the sanctions on the program is now a Texas Longhorn and already among the all-time top 10 performers at UT a...