Northwestern sent a contingent of 11 swimmers to the 2026 USA Swimming Short Course World Championship Trials, which took place at the FMC Natatorium in Westmont, Illinois, from Oct. 28 through Oct. 31.
The meet, which serves as the final selection meet for USA’s team at December’s World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) in Beijing. For each event of the meet, the event’s top two finishers were selected for Team USA. Following the meet, USA Swimming finalized its team selections, which can be viewed
on SwimSwam.
Full results for the meet can be found on the Meet Mobile app or on Swimcloud’s meet page for the event.
Throughout this article, I convert the SCM times posted at the meet to SCY using SwimSwam’s online time conversion tool. The converted times are not official by any means, and purely a method of comparing the swimmers’ performance in SCM to their typical SCY time standards.
Additionally, all times denoted as “personal best” swims in this article are the swimmers’ short course meters best times, NOT their overall personal best across all course formats (SCM, LCM, SCY).
Men’s recap
Northwestern’s men’s team had four American swimmers represented in the meet.
Stuart Seymour and Diego Nosack were the standouts of the bunch. Seymour reached the finals in both the 50-meter backstroke and 100-meter individual medley, nabbing personal-best SCM times in both events. In the backstroke, the 6-foot-2 senior placed fifth with a 23.62 (20.59 converted 50-yard backstroke), missing out on Team USA by 0.34 seconds, and in the I.M. he placed eighth with a 52.49. Meanwhile, Nosack was a finalist in the 200-meter individual medley and 200-meter butterfly, placing fifth and seventh, respectively. His butterfly 1:57.36 was a SCM best (1:45.62 converted 200-yard butterfly).
Cade Duncan competed in the 50- and 100-meter butterfly and freestyle events. He posted three SCM personal-best times: a 21.97 in the 50-meter freestyle (19.79 converted 50-yard freestyle), a 47.62 in the 100-meter freestyle (42.90 converted 100-yard freestyle) and a 23.50 in the 50-meter butterfly (21.17 converted 50-yard butterfly). Though, the senior’s best finish of the meet was in the 100-meter butterfly, where he touched 10th with a 52.04 (46.88 converted 100-yard butterfly).
Conor Schuster was the fourth swimmer, posting a SCM best time in the 100-meter butterfly with a 52.89 (47.64 converted 100-yard butterfly).
International swimmers Joshua Staples, Oli Kos and David Gerchik also competed in the meet’s preliminaries, but were ineligible to advance to the meet’s selection finals because they don’t represent the United States.
Staples competed in five events and logged preliminary top-15 finishes in four of them — the 100-meter breaststroke, 200-meter breaststroke, 100-meter breaststroke and 200-meter individual medley. He posted a SCM best time in the 100-meter breaststroke, swimming a 59.03 (53.18 converted 100-yard breaststroke). Kos swam in four races and finished top 10 in two of them, with a 51.97 in the 100-meter backstroke (45.50 converted 100-yard backstroke) and a 1:56.52 in the 200-meter backstroke (1:42.52 converted 200-yard backstroke). Gerchik placed 15th in the 100-meter backstroke and ninth in the 200-yard backstroke.
Women’s recap
Northwestern’s women’s team had four swimmers compete in the trials’ preliminaries: Zoe Nordmann, Grey Davis, Aya Ferguson and Flawia Kamzol.
Nordmann was one of three swimmers in the entire meet to enter the 800-meter freestyle. The 5-foot-11 junior finished third at the event with an 8:31.09 (9:44.10 converted 1,000-yard freestyle), heartbreakingly missing out on making the USA Short Course Worlds team by .54 seconds, behind Minnesota’s Katie McCarthy. Davis, the 5-foot-5 junior from Charlottesville, Virginia, competed in the 50-meter butterfly, posting a 27.25 (24.54 converted 50-yard butterfly). And Ferguson, the San Diego first-year, touched in at 54.85 in the 100-meter freestyle (49.41 converted 100-yard freestyle) the 100-meter freestyle.
First-year standout Kamzol also competed in the preliminaries as an international swimmer ineligible for finals. Kamzol was among the best in the competition, however, and would have advanced to the finals had she been eligible. She placed fourth in the 50- and 100-meter butterfly preliminaries, with personal best SCM times of 25.67 (23.12 converted 50-yard freestyle) and 57.34 (51.65 converted 100-yard butterfly), finishing ahead of Olympians like Alex Schackell, Torri Huske and Olivia Smoliga. She also blitzed a 53.64 SCM personal best in the 100-meter butterfly (48.32 converted 100-yard freestyle), which was good for a preliminary 10th-place finish.
Looking ahead
Next weekend, Northwestern will embark upon its first travel meet of November, flying southeast to Durham, North Carolina, to take on the Duke Blue Devils (Nov. 6-7). After the dual-meet, the ‘Cats will regroup in Evanston for their ultimate peak meets of the fall season: for swimmers, the Texas Hall of Fame Invite in Austin, Texas, and for divers, the Ohio State Fall Invite in Columbus, Ohio.
