Coach Rachel Stratton-Mills is coming into her fourth season main Northwestern’s males’s and girls’s swimming and diving packages, and each groups have seen regular improvement all through her tenure.
Last season, the lads had their highest end on the NCAA Championships since 2008, inserting twenty sixth within the nation, and set 12 new faculty information throughout the season. The ladies positioned thirty sixth within the nation on the NCAA Championships and set two faculty information over the yr.
The Wildcats have leaned on a younger core lately, organising the 2026-27 groups with loads of expertise.
In May, NU named rising seniors Aaron Baltaytis, Diego Nosack and Stuart Seymour as the lads’s group captains for the upcoming season, whereas rising juniors Zoe Nordmann and Grey Davis and rising senior Amy Pan had been chosen as the ladies’s group captains.
Baltaytis’ story is a exceptional one, overcoming most cancers in 2025 to grow to be an NCAA qualifier in 2026. All-American rising junior Joshua Staples can also be again for the ’Cats after ending eighth within the 400-yard IM on the 2026 NCAA Championships.
The males’s group completed fourth within the Big Ten final season, led by Seymour’s All-Big Ten Second Team end within the 100-yard freestyle, the place he broke the varsity file with a time of 41.87 seconds. He broke that file once more on the NCAA Championships, racing in 41.76 seconds.
The ’Cats completed ninth on the ladies’s Big Ten Championships and despatched athletes to the NCAA Championships in 4 occasions. NCAA qualifiers Nordmann, Pan and rising junior Isabella Chen are returning this season. Pan was a part of NU’s 200-yard freestyle relay that completed thirteenth within the nation and earned honorable point out All-American honors.
Both packages will profit closely from the brand new five-for-five NCAA eligibility guidelines, with 9 would-be seniors now having two years of remaining eligibility for every group, together with Baltaytis, Nosack, Seymour and Pan.
The ’Cats signed 5 incoming recruits to the lads’s program and 6 to the ladies’s program final yr, including to the 2026-27 rosters.
After sturdy postseason finishes, every program is trying to proceed its strides ahead led by a veteran group of returnees.
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