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Owls primed to make waves at NCAA Championship

GAMBIER, Ohio -- A few weeks after winning the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Championship, the Kenyon College Owls are ready for the culmination of their 2025-26 season—the NCAA Division III Women's Swimming and Diving Championship. The four-day national meet begins Wednesday, March 18, at the IU Natatorium in Indianapolis, Indiana.

After being crowned NCAA champions for the 25th time in 2024, the Owls claimed a third-place finish at the 2025 championship. At that meet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won its first-ever swimming title after piling up 497 team points and holding off runner-up New York University, which scored 470 points. Kenyon concluded the meet with 438 points.

The Kenyon program's total of 25 national titles is the most for any women's sport in NCAA history. The next closest count is 22 national titles won by the Division I North Carolina University women's soccer team. 

As the Owls turn their focus to a possible 26th title, they have to overcome teams like MIT, New York, Emory University, and Denison University. The Kenyon women, ranked No. 2 in the latest College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America's (CSCAA) Top 25 Dual Meet Rankings, are sending 17 out of a maximum 18 qualifiers to the national championship. New York, the No. 1 ranked team in the CSCAA poll and Emory, the No. 3- ranked team and 12-time national champion, will both send full NCAA rosters. Denison, a two-time national champion, heads to Indianapolis as the No. 4 ranked team, while defending champion MIT is ranked at No. 5.

Kenyon, for the first time since 2018, will not have any returning individual champions on its roster. One season ago, the Owls logged two individual-event titles, both coming from Jennah Fadely, who swept the breaststroke events and then graduated a few weeks later.

Kenyon's best shot at a 2026 individual event title could occur in the 500-yard freestyle, where sophomore Nora Lee Brown and senior Molly Haag own the No. 2- and No. 3-seeded times, respectively. Haag, a 13-time All-American, also owns the No. 3 seed in the 200-yard freestyle, and the No. 1 seed in the 1,650-yard freestyle. She has half a dozen career top-five individual and relay finishes in national meets and has herself in excellent position to claim her first NCAA event title.

Senior Gwen Eisenbeis and sophomore Kelsey Van Eldik are also in good spots. Eisenbeis enters the meet with Division III's top time in the 100-yard backstroke, an event the eight-time All-American placed fifth in last season. Van Eldik is strong in both breaststroke races. She will enter the championship as top seed in the 100 and the second seed in the 200. She placed fourth and sixth, respectively, in those events last year. 

Other experienced swimmers looking to rack up points for Kenyon will be senior Lisa Torrecillas-Jouault, as well as juniors Kate Bogan, Sofia Giordano, Amelia Stevenson, and Ashlyn Widmer. With a lot of experience on the roster, there are still seven Kenyon qualifiers who will be making their first NCAA Championship appearance.

While the Owls did not have any divers qualify for the meet, all five relays did. The strongest of those events are the medley relays, in which the Owls hold the top seed in the 400-yard race and the No. 2 seed in the 200-yard race.

The championship schedule starts Wednesday. Each day of the meet will have preliminary heats starting at 10 a.m. and then feature final heats beginning at 6 p.m.
 
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