2024 WOMEN’S NCAA SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
If the Texas Longhorns are going to pull an upset over the three-time defending champion Virginia Cavaliers at the 2024 NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships, they’re going to have to do it without one of their key newcomers this season.
5th-year swimmer Alicia Wilson, a transfer from Cal, did not appear on the pre-selection sheets released Tuesday, which means she won’t be swimming at the upcoming NCAA Championships.
Wilson posted this message to Instagram earlier today:
In the post, Wilson explains that her goal in coming to Texas was “to bolster the team’s NCAA performance.
“This move was never about training for a second Olympics. As I write this today, I am currently training with the team, and helping them prepare for NCAAs. Over the weekend I will return to England and finish my career on home soil around my family and childhood swimming club,” she said.
Wilson represented Great Britain at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, where she finished 8th in the 200 IM.
Wilson explained that after struggling with her performances in the fall semester, “the focus became turning things around by (the Big 12 Championships).”
She set goal times of 1:55 in the 200 IM and 4:07 in the 400 IM for Big 12s as a jumping-off point toward NCAAs.
As part of the statement, she lauded the effort by her coaches Carol Capitani and Mitch Dalton to get her swimming back on track, but after studying races, pouring into nutrition, recovery and more. She recognized the high level support she received from her teammates and coaches, and several of her teammates responded to the post with further messages of support.
Wilson raced as recently as last week’s Big 12 Championships, where she was 2nd in the 400 IM, 4th int he 200 back, and 5th in the 200 IM.
She would have been invited to the NCAA Championships had she been entered, though her season-best times were not close to what she swam at Cal and would not have been seeded to score.
- 200 back – 1:54.76, 51st seed (pre-selection)
- 200 IM – 1:56.58, 27th seed
- 400 IM – 4:09.04, 24th seed
Still, her upside-potential was clear. She was 3rd at NCAAs in the 200 IM in 2021, and her lifetime bests would have been seeded to score around 25 points, though those lifetime bests are all at least three years old.
For the Longhorns to catch the Cavaliers, who had 19 swimmers qualifiable for NCAAs (though they had to reduce that number), they will need a lot of things to break their way in two weeks, and so far they’ve already missed one of those potential breaks with Wilson’s absence.
Still, the Longhorns are projected to have 15 individual swimmers qualify for NCAAs, plus a few divers. That swimming count is the same as Wilson’s old team Cal, which is on a resurgent season this year under new leadership.