Mustangs Ship Six Swimmers To NCAA Championships

SMU will ship six swimmers to the NCAA Championships in Atlanta this week, competing in 4 particular person occasions and two relays beginning on Wednesday.

Jack Berube and Francis Brennan will every swim two particular person occasions, whereas Eli Likins, Harold Lockhart, Sage Sungail and Jack Forrest will signify the Mustangs within the 400 and 800 freestyle relays. The group may also be joined by divers Luke Sitz and Grant Cates.

It marks one other step ahead for an SMU program with a wealthy historical past that features 29 NCAA champions, however none since 1998.

“It just means that our program is getting better and better and better,” SMU head coach Greg Rhodenbaugh mentioned. “But you see that from the school records, there’s only one school record that we haven’t set since I’ve been here, but I coached the guy that holds it, so yeah, we’re getting better and better and better.”

Berube is a part of that progress. He holds two particular person faculty data and is a part of the record-holding 400 medley relay.

After narrowly lacking the NCAA Championships final yr, he certified within the 100 and 200 backstroke and is aiming to complete within the Top 16 and rating crew factors.

“The goal over the summer was to put myself in a position to make NCAAs in the midseason,” Berube mentioned. “When the midseason meet came around, I hovered around the 19th place marker (in the 200) until ACC came, where I then dropped another second from my midseason time and now sit 18th.”

There’s additionally energy in numbers.

If there’s just one or two swimmers advancing, there is not a lot competitors within the pool. But between the six of them, there’s loads of good work that may get accomplished.

“A great group of six guys in the water at one point in time is uplifting and helps,” Berube mentioned. “It helps everyone maintain their kind of control and kind of make sure they’re on top of the ball, and to see the hard work that you know these guys have put together is pretty cool. And how many have qualified this year can send a message to everyone else on the team, like, ‘Hey, bring more guys. Take more steps forward.'”

Brennan may also make his NCAA debut, qualifying within the 200 and 500 freestyle. He reached the A Final at ACCs within the 200 and is this system’s first freshman NCAA qualifier since 2009.

He has dropped three seconds within the 200 this season, breaking the college report a number of instances, most lately to 1:32.13. That time is what he is swimming in opposition to in Atlanta.

“I usually go based off times,” Brennan mentioned. “I find where you place is nice, obviously, but as long as you’ve done all you can to be better than you were before, you’ve got to be happy with yourself.”

Brennan can be a part of a freshman class that has rapidly elevated SMU’s competitiveness.

“Francis has really gotten a lot better quickly, and a lot of our freshmen this year got better quickly,” Rhodenbaugh mentioned. “That freshman class was the fastest class to be brought in. … Francis, Andy (Baklanov), Trey (Clervi) and Thad (Austin), all those guys, have gotten so much faster. Francis is part of that group and kind of a leader of that group, and he’s become a leader of the team, so that’s pretty neat to see.”

Along together with his particular person occasions, Brennan is an choice to swim within the relays together with Lockhart, Sungail and Forrest. That veteran trio returns after competing in the identical occasions final yr and may have one remaining NCAA meet collectively.

“It’s nice to get one more opportunity to swim with the guys that I’ve been here for so long with and the guys I’ve been training here for so long with,” Lockhart mentioned. “It’s nice to kind of go out on a sort of high note.”

Forrest and Sungail have spent their whole careers with the Mustangs, rising alongside this system through the years. In 2024, Forrest was a part of the 800 free relay that earned All-America standing — the primary Mustang relay to take action in over a decade.

“When I was being recruited in high school, our coaches told us that the goal was to build SMU into a program that was competitive at the NCAA level,” Forrest mentioned. “And at the time we hadn’t qualified relays for SMU in some time. So getting to spend my entire four years at SMU and then be in a position to end at the NCAA level is really cool for me.”

That torch shall be carried by swimmers like Likins. The sophomore is a part of the 400 relay, and getting early expertise competing in meets just like the ACC and NCAA championships is one thing he and the remainder of the returners can construct on.

“I think this will be a great experience for me leading into my next two years here,” Likins mentioned. “I think the coaches are building a great program here that we can be Top 20 nationally as a team in the next couple of years. So, I think having this experience this year and being able to carry that into next year with training and our competitions, I think it will be great.”

Rhodenbaugh, a former SMU swimmer, assistant coach and head coach, returned seven years in the past to rebuild this system and sees this group as progress.

“That was kind of the whole idea of coming back, just to try and get it back competitive and toward the Top 10, because that’s what I was used to when I was here before,” Rhodenbaugh mentioned. “So that’s been fun to have people that can score in the Top 8 and can score and that kind of stuff. We’ve got a ways to go. The wave has accelerated away, but we’re accelerating quicker than the wave, so we’re catching it. We’ve just got to keep doing it. We’ll be there in the next year or two.”