NCAA Women’s Championships: Kate Douglass Smashes 200 IM American Record With 1:48.37; Huske, Walsh Also Break Old Record

Kate Douglass -- Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

NCAA Women’s Championships: Kate Douglass Smashes 200 IM American Record With 1:48.37; Huske, Walsh Also Break Old Record

For the first time in their already-illustrious college careers, University of Virginia Alex Walsh and Kate Douglass raced against each other in a 200-yard IM final. At all previous ACC or NCAA Championships during their three-year overlap in Charlottesville, one of the two raced the event while the other focused on another event that day. Typically, that meant Walsh in the 200 IM with Douglass in the 50 freestyle, and both were NCAA titlists in their respective events the last two years.

In 2022, Walsh swam the fastest time in history in the medley at 1:50.08, just missing the vaunted 1:50 barrier, while Douglass swam the quickest mark ever in the 50 free. Months later, Walsh secured her first world title in the 200 IM with a dominant performance in Budapest.

This year, however, Virginia head coach Todd DeSorbo entered both stars, both Olympic medalists in the 200-meter IM 20 months ago in Tokyo, in the 200 IM, and their showdown was among the most anticipated of the meet after Douglass swam a time of 1:50.15 at the ACC Championships last month, less than a tenth short of Walsh’s record. Meanwhile, the wildcard in the race was Torri Huske, the world champion in the 100-meter butterfly last year and the runnerup in the 200 IM to Walsh at last year’s NCAAs.

But after all the anticipation of the race between the two teammates, this final belonged to Douglass in a landslide. Douglass went out in 23.51 on fly, just ahead of Huske’s 23.56, and she was immediately under Walsh’s record pace. Douglass opened up a lead of almost a half-second on backstroke and almost a second after breaststroke. In fact, each of her 50-yard splits were ahead of everyone else in the race. By the midway point of breaststroke, Walsh and Huske were locked in a tight battle for second place with no chance of catching up.

Attention turned to the clock, with Douglass clearly in range of the first-ever sub-1:50 performance. And she did it — by an enormous margin. Douglass finished in 1:48.37, bypassing 1:39 altogether. Douglass clobbered the existing American, NCAA and U.S. Open records by 1.71 seconds.

“Yeah, definitely not,” Douglass said when asked if she thought a 1:48 was a possibility. “I feel like I was pretty confident I could do something like that in that race. Two years ago, I went 1:50.9 in this pool, and I feel like I’m a much better swimmer now than I was then. That’s kind of why I chose this race. I wanted to have one last really good 200 IM, and I was confident that I could do that.”

And Douglass beat the field by 1.69 seconds. Huske finished hard to overtake Walsh for second, touching in 1:50.06, one hundredth ahead of Walsh’s 1:50.07. Both swimmers were marginally faster than Walsh’s previous record from 2022, which only underscored the historic nature of Douglass’ performance. Huske took a substantial chunk off her previous best time of 1:51.81.

As for the team competition, it was a huge point haul for Virginia with Douglass and Walsh plus Ella Nelson finishing fourth in 1:53.13. Wisconsin’s Phoebe Bacon took fifth in 1:53.56. Texas’ Emma Sticklen earned sixth in 1:54.09, while in the B-final, Georgia’s Zoie Hartmann touched out Texas’ Kelly Pash by one hundredth, 1:54.31 to 1:54.32.

Before Thursday, Douglass had never raced the 200 IM at the NCAA Championships, and for most of 2022, she skipped the meters version of the event altogether. Fresh off her Olympic bronze, Douglass skipped the event at the 2022 U.S. International Team Trials, ruling her out of contention for the event at Worlds as Walsh pulled away for gold. She expressed an interest in focusing on the 200 breaststroke and sprint freestyle instead.

But in December of last year, Douglass was offered a chance to swim the 200 IM at the Short Course World Championships. She took the opportunity and won gold in 2:02.16, an American record and just off the world record. After that, her desire to race the medley returned.

“It’s kind of weird because going into this season, I definitely wasn’t focusing on the 200 IM, and I honestly wasn’t training for it all,” Douglass said. “I was given the opportunity to swim it at Short Course Worlds, and I was excited to swim it there, and it went really well, honestly. After that, I started to think I may swim it at the end of the season, so I started to do a little bit more IM work because I didn’t really do any in the fall.”

Douglass added that the race was not perfect, mentioning a “shaky” start and a first turn that felt off, but it looked pretty close to perfect. This was the sort of swim destined to be forever associated with this Cavaliers dynasty in women’s swimming, and the best college swimmer in the country is once again thriving in one of her best events.

Event 4  Women 200 Yard IM
=========================================================================
         NCAA: N 1:50.08  3/17/2022 Alex Walsh, Virginia
         Meet: M 1:50.08  3/17/2022 Alex Walsh, Virginia
     American: A 1:50.08  3/17/2022 Alex Walsh, Virginia
      US Open: O 1:50.08  3/17/2022 Alex Walsh, Virginia
         Pool: P 1:50.92  11/19/2020Kate Douglass, Virginia
    Name                 Year School            Prelims     Finals Points 
=========================================================================
                       === Championship Final ===                        
 
  1 Douglass, Kate         SR Virginia          1:51.81    1:48.37N  20  
    r:+0.67  23.51        50.91 (27.40)
        1:22.29 (31.38)     1:48.37 (26.08)
  2 Huske, Torri           SO Stanford          1:52.38    1:50.06N  17  
    r:+0.62  23.56        51.39 (27.83)
        1:23.64 (32.25)     1:50.06 (26.42)
  3 Walsh, Alex            JR Virginia          1:52.89    1:50.07N  16  
    r:+0.74  23.95        51.52 (27.57)
        1:23.24 (31.72)     1:50.07 (26.83)
  4 Nelson, Ella           SR Virginia          1:54.06    1:53.13   15  
    r:+0.69  25.47        54.04 (28.57)
        1:26.16 (32.12)     1:53.13 (26.97)
  5 Bacon, Phoebe          JR Wisconsin         1:54.43    1:53.56   14  
    r:+0.70  24.60        53.08 (28.48)
        1:26.37 (33.29)     1:53.56 (27.19)
  6 Sticklen, Emma         JR Texas             1:54.18    1:54.09   13  
    r:+0.67  24.21        51.99 (27.78)
        1:26.77 (34.78)     1:54.09 (27.32)
  7 Hay, Abby              SR Louisville        1:54.03    1:54.62   12  
    r:+0.73  24.26        52.80 (28.54)
        1:26.58 (33.78)     1:54.62 (28.04)
  8 Foley, Sally           JR Duke              1:54.35    1:54.96   11  
    r:+0.68  25.03        54.42 (29.39)
        1:27.06 (32.64)     1:54.96 (27.90)
 
                        === Consolation Final ===                        
 
  9 Hartman, Zoie          SR Georgia           1:54.63    1:54.31    9  
    r:+0.73  25.72        54.24 (28.52)
        1:26.97 (32.73)     1:54.31 (27.34)
 10 Pash, Kelly            SR Texas             1:54.63    1:54.32    7  
    r:+0.71  24.44        53.89 (29.45)
        1:26.80 (32.91)     1:54.32 (27.52)
 11 Fuller, Josephine      SO Tennessee         1:54.61    1:54.94    6  
    r:+0.65  24.94        53.99 (29.05)
        1:27.58 (33.59)     1:54.94 (27.36)
 12 Arens, Abby            JR NC State          1:55.41    1:54.99    5  
    r:+0.68  24.28        54.43 (30.15)
        1:27.45 (33.02)     1:54.99 (27.54)
 13 Peplowski, Noelle      5Y Indiana           1:55.37    1:55.46    4  
    r:+0.68  25.65        55.01 (29.36)
        1:27.32 (32.31)     1:55.46 (28.14)
 14 Noble, Kennedy         FR NC State          1:55.48    1:55.96    3  
    r:+0.66  25.17        53.72 (28.55)
        1:28.09 (34.37)     1:55.96 (27.87)
 15 Bell, Lucy             FR Stanford          1:54.89    1:56.25    2  
    r:+0.68  25.37        54.66 (29.29)
        1:28.35 (33.69)     1:56.25 (27.90)
 16 Polonsky, Leah         SO California        1:55.01    1:56.34    1  
    r:+0.66  25.54        54.46 (28.92)
        1:27.95 (33.49)     1:56.34 (28.39)
 
                 Women - Team Rankings - Through Event 4                 
 
  1. Virginia                          138   2. Texas                             115
  3. Stanford                           72   4. Georgia                            64
  5. California                         60   5. Tennessee                          60
  7. Louisville                         52   7. NC State                           52
  9. Indiana                            50  10. Wisconsin                          49
 11. Florida                            47  12. Alabama                            44
 13. Ohio St                            38  14. UNC                                22
 15. Kentucky                           14  15. Southern California                14
 17. Duke                               13  18. Virginia Tech                       6
 18. Michigan                            6  20. Arizona St                          4
 20. UCLA                                4  20. Arkansas                            4
 23. Auburn                              2

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