NCAA Women’s Championships: N.C. State’s Katharine Berkoff is a Believer and Riding Confidence Toward Olympic Trials

N.C. State’s Katharine Berkoff is a Believer and Riding Confidence Toward Olympic Trials

Since her Omaha heartache three years ago at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Katharine Berkoff has registered significant international milestones each of the last two years. She’s eager to write the fifth and final chapter of a storied college career with NC State this week…and she’s prepared to do her best at the next Olympic Trials in June—all with a perspective and confidence forged from disappointment.

Katharine Berkoff didn’t watch the Tokyo Olympics. She didn’t seek out any more than a basic tick-tock of results. She didn’t “think about it, if I could avoid it.” For most of the balance of 2021, Berkoff processed as best she could the heartbreak of Olympic Trials.

Berkoff had ridden a wave into Omaha. She’d claimed her first NCAA title in the 100 yard backstroke that spring, helping North Carolina State add a pair of medley relay gold medals. She looked to be carving for herself a place in the American swimming hierarchy, an all-purpose sprinter flourishing in college.

So when Berkoff finished fourth in the 100 meter back at Trials and managed no better than eighth in the 200 back, there was no sugarcoating her emotions.

“Olympic Trials 2021 was so devastating for me,” Berkoff said. “I was heartbroken for a long time…. It took probably a good six months for me to feel better about it. But I think it was probably the best learning experience I ever had because it kind of opened my eyes to what I need to do to really accomplish what I want and form a better mindset around the way I’m thinking about myself and my races.”

Indeed, Berkoff has focused on the positive since her Omaha heartache: “I really believe in myself,” Berkoff said. “I’ve been putting in so much work. I’ve got a lot of confidence with long course, a ton more than I had three years ago.”

RISING FROM THE MOUNTAINS

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Berkoff’s rise toward stardom—to the point where Olympic Trials could render such despair—benefited more than most from the Olympic postponement in 2020. The native of Missoula, Montana, had long been on the national radar. A big fish in the relatively small Big Sky pond, she has the genes—as the daughter of International Swimming Hall of Famer David Berkoff, who won silver in the 100 back at the 1988 Olympics and bronze in 1992, plus two relay gold medals. Katharine was an international prospect before college, medaling at the 2018 Junior Pan Pacific Championships and 2019 World University Games.

Her freshman year in Raleigh was promising, with an ACC title in the 100 back before NCAAs was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the breakout year—perhaps, given her father’s backstroke innovation, the “blastoff” year—came as a sophomore. She won the 2021 NCAA title in the 100 back, claiming the ACC record. She was part of a 400 medley relay squad that set the NCAA and U.S. Open marks, winning both medley relay national crowns. She made the A-final in the 200 back and 50 free.

Berkoff knows now that even that achievement concealed a lack of long-course training and race readiness that ultimately doomed her Trials. She raced the long-course 100 back “maybe once or twice before Trials and thought I could just handle it.” But the otherworldly depth of American women’s backstroke is unforgiving. And while Berkoff’s 58.82 in the final might have been enough to make the Olympic final, it landed just fourth among her compatriots, not enough to maintain the second-place position she had held at the 50-meter wall. Instead, Regan Smith and Rhyan White went to Tokyo, from a grueling week in which Smith, as the world record holder in the 200 back, was denied a chance to compete at the Olympics in that event.

Such is the reality that Berkoff has come to accept as an American backstroker. “It makes the pressure at Olympic Trials pretty crazy-high,” she said. “It’s kind of annoying at times. I wish it wasn’t so difficult, but it does make it so much more rewarding.”

TURNING SADNESS INTO WORLDS SILVER

This isn’t the point in Berkoff’s journey where suddenly everything starts to go right for her. Some have lived that script, absorbing disappointment in one Olympic quad as a lead-in to utter dominance in the next. But that isn’t Berkoff. And with Paris beckoning in 2024, she’s looking to use her practiced resilience as a difference-maker.

Photo Courtesy: NCAA Media

Berkoff salvaged 2021 with a stellar showing at the World Short Course Championships in Abu Dhabi, with bronze in the 100 back among six total medals, with two relay golds and three relay silvers. She repeated as the NCAA champion in the 100 back at NCAAs in the spring of 2022, the first woman to blast through the 49-second barrier with an American and U.S. Open record of 48.74. She went from strength to strength in long course, destroying the American and U.S. Open marks in the 50 back in 27.12 seconds to get to Worlds. She finished fourth in the 100 back at the Trials meet, but she called the trip to Budapest “one of the most special moments for me in my career.”

It got more special when she returned with silver from Worlds, with only Canadian Kylie Masse and 8-hundredths of a second separating her from gold.

Seeing the flip side of the Omaha disappointment underscored why Berkoff works so hard for such moments, even among the frustration that America’s backstroke depth can deliver.

“I think it’s pretty special because it is such an elite group in the U.S., and it makes it so much more challenging, but it’s also that much more rewarding when it happens,” she said. “I’ve always been a believer in myself and I really trust the training I’ve done. I’ve been going really fast all year and working really hard for a long time, and I really believe in myself.”

THE TRAIL TO TRIALS

Berkoff’s belief has remained constant, even if results have wavered. She was stung not to win a national title in 2023, as Virginia’s Gretchen Walsh usurped her records in the 100 back. She added two NCAA silver medals in relays—while finishing fifth in a best time (46.87, the school record) in the 100 free and fifth in the 50 free—despite a season disrupted by illnesses.

She finally broke through in the 100 back at Trials in 2023, trailing only Smith’s U.S. Open record, in addition to another win over Smith in the 50 back. Her reward in Fukuoka was medley relay gold plus bronze in the 100, behind Kaylee McKeown and Smith.

The busy schedule means Berkoff is carefully plotting her goals for 2024. Written in boldest ink is the one she’s held since age 5, accessible only through Olympic Trials. The NCAA season will serve as a steppingstone, her fifth year already a bonus she didn’t expect, but one she jumped at as soon as it was presented. Raleigh was going to be her home base for 2024 prep anyway, and she could see herself staying there for a run at the 2028 Olympic Games.

Whatever happens in the NCAA pool this year—and Berkoff has been setting quick in-season times—will be the prologue. Most important is that Berkoff knows the swimmer who will get behind the blocks in Indianapolis in June is wiser, faster and more equipped to handle the physical and emotional challenges than that one from Omaha three summers ago.

“It’s a world of difference,” she said. “I knew I had a chance in 2021, but I feel so much more prepared now. I just feel like I’m so much better and handling pressure. Even at World Champs Trials last year, it’s never happened before, but for some reason, I was not nervous before the 100 back. I just knew I was going to make it.

“I just feel like my mindset has really changed, and even if I wasn’t certain of what was going to happen, I was confident I was doing everything in my power to be the best I could be.”

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