The 2021 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships are here! With limited attendance to swimmers, coaches, sports information directors and team staff in the venue, it is definitely looking like a different championships, but many did not think we would get to this point a few months ago. There is only one event on tonight’s schedule with the timed finals of the 800 freestyle relay in Greensboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
The Virginia Cavaliers, the heavy favorites to win this year’s team title, won their first ever NCAA relay in school history to open the championships in Greensboro with a 6:52.56. The team of\u00a0Kyla Valls\u00a0<\/strong>(1:44.64),\u00a0Paige Madden\u00a0<\/strong>(1:41.63),\u00a0Ella Nelson<\/strong> (1:43.11) and\u00a0Alex Walsh\u00a0<\/strong>(1:43.18) dominated the fifth and final heat to open their pursuit of winning their first team title in school history as the Cavaliers are seeded first in all five relays. The winner of the last five 800 free relays at the women’s meet has gone on to win the team title.<\/p>\n “It means everything,” Valls told\u00a0Swimming World\u00a0<\/em>remotely of winning the first relay national title for UVA. “Going into this meet, we just wanted to start it off on the right note. We are still in a little bit of shock but we are happy with how it turned out.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Virginia’s win also marks the first winner in this relay outside the SEC and Pac-12 since SMU won in 1997 and this is also the first time any team in the current ACC has won this relay.<\/p>\n This has been a long time coming for Virginia, who missed out on potentially winning last year’s NCAA meet due to the pandemic cancelling the meet, and the team is grateful to be able to finally compete against the rest of the country.<\/p>\n “I was so excited (to be here),” Madden said from her hotel via Zoom. “We weren’t able to be here last year so it is just really special to be here, period.”<\/p>\n “Especially after last year, we had gotten so excited for the meet and obviously it didn’t happen,” Valls said. “For the whole year, we had this in the back of our heads that we wanted to do it. Todd had said so many times we just wanted to get to this point so to finally be here and kick off the meet the way we did is super exciting.”<\/p>\n “Our mentality all year has been ‘if we can make it to this meet, we will do something special,'” Nelson said. “I think we got the ball rolling for the rest of the meet.”<\/p>\n “It’s going to be hard getting to sleep tonight,” Nelson added. “We are all so excited and I think the rest of the team is super excited also.”<\/p>\n It is hard to believe Virginia has never won a relay at this level, having gotten as close as 0.01 shy back in 2015 in this pool in the 400 medley relay when the Cavaliers were out-touched at the very last stroke by Stanford’s\u00a0Simone Manuel\u00a0<\/strong>in what is still the fastest 100 freestyle relay split of all-time<\/a>. Virginia was a favorite to win a few relays at last year’s meet before it was unfortunately cancelled so this win isn’t out of nowhere for a Cavaliers team that has been quickly building a powerhouse<\/a> in Charlottesville with coaches Todd DeSorbo <\/strong>and Tyler Fenwick<\/strong>.<\/p>\n