Best two swims of the Division I women's NCAA championships

 

First of all, in the team race, Virginia won, marking a decided shift from where the traditional powers of swimming used to be (California, Texas, Florida, Arizona come to mind).   Still, Texas was third, Florida 4th, and Stanford 9th, so they're still around.   Florida has fallen to 17th.  A couple of Big Ten schools were in the Top 10, as was Alabama.  So there's more talent distributed around the country than there used to be.

I've rated my two top swims below.

First of all, Maggie MacNeil of Michigan's 100-yard butterfly, which basically set every record possible to set:  NCAA, American, U.S. Open, Meet, and Pool.  

(For some unfathomable reason, while I could find many official NCAA Championships videos of many of the events at the championships, I couldn't find this one. WTF???  So you can watch the video below, and see the race in the first minute-and-a-half.)

Second was freshman Phoebe Bacon winning the 200-yard backstroke, which was the third-fastest time by a freshman in the NCAA championships in that event.  And she wasn't even in the discussion until about 125 yards into the race.