Northwestern women’s swim and dive team placed ninth overall at the Big Ten Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship title this past weekend at the Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center in Minneapolis.
The ‘Cats matched their 2025 conference finish, despite scoring 446 points, a 37 point increase from last season.
Entering the meet, No. 4 Michigan, No. 6 Indiana and No. 11 Ohio State were widely viewed as the conference’s top contenders, and the results reflected that expectation. Michigan ultimately won its
first women’s swimming and diving conference championship since 2018, Indiana finished second and the reigning champion Buckeyes took third. The Wolverines showcased dominant star power throughout the four-day meet, led by high-point champion Bella Sims, who won the 400-yard individual medley, 200-yard individual medley and swam on three championship-winning relays.
Results for the Big Ten Championships can be found on the Meet Mobile app or on Swimcloud’s meet page for the event.
Meet Recap
Northwestern finished ninth for the second consecutive year, scoring 446 total points. The ’Cats were close to improving upon its 2025 finish, battling all weekend against Purdue for an eight place finish. However, in the end, Purdue edged Northwestern 497 to 446, carried in large part by a strong performance in the meet’s diving events that was too much for the ‘Cats to overcome on the swimming side. On the overall meet podium, Michigan stood atop the standings, followed by Indiana in second and Ohio State in third.
Michigan controlled much of the championship, winning half of the individual events and four of the five relays. The Wolverines were powered by its three star swimmers — Bella Sims, Hannah Bellard and Letitia Sim — who each finished top five in the meet’s high point standings. Sims won the 400-yard individual medley and 200-yard individual medley, Bellard won the 200-yard butterfly and 500-yard freestyle, while Sim swept the breaststroke events.
The championships saw a series of Big Ten conference records taken down. Meet records were set by Michigan’s Sims-Sim-Kendall-Greenhawt and Sims-Sim-Kendall-Balduccini relay teams in the 200 and 400-yard medley relays, respectively. Individual meet records were set by Sims in the 400-yard individual medley, Indiana’s Liberty Clark in the 100-yard freestyle and Wisconsin’s Maggie Wanezek in the 200-yard backstroke.
For Northwestern, the highlight of the meet came in the 800-yard freestyle relay, where Ekaterina Nikonova, Sydney Smith, Zoe Nordmann and Hana Shimizu-Bowers combined for a school record time of 7:01.42 to finish sixth — the Wildcats’ highest relay placement of the meet. Northwestern also placed sixth in the 200 freestyle relay behind the team of Lindsay Ervin, Nikonova, Audrey Yu and Pan.
Individually, Zoe Nordmann placed sixth in the 1650-yard freestyle , while Lindsay Ervin touched eighth in the 100 freestyle with a personal best time of 48.28. The Wildcats also had seven B-final (featuring ningth to 16th-placed qualifiers)appearances from Sydney Smith (200-yard freestyle), Teya Nikolova (100-yard breaststroke), Nordmann (500-yard freestyle), Ervin (50-yard freestyle), Kat Nikonova (100-yard freestyle), Shimizu-Bowers (200-yard butterfly) and Claire Mehok (200-yard backstroke).
On the diving side, Northwestern saw limited scoring impact compared to some of the conference’s deeper diving programs, which greatly hurt them in the overall team competition. Up against Purdue for eighth place, the ‘Cats scored points from just two C-final appearances across all three diving events, while the Boilermakers had divers place in the top three of each diving event, with Avery Worobel winning the 3-meter competition. Isabella Chen was the ‘Cats’ top performer and lone points scorer in the 3-meter and 10-meter events, placing 19th and 24th respectively. Northwestern did not score points in the 1-meter event.
In the individual high point standings, the Big Ten Swimmer of the Championship Bella Sims led the way for Michigan with five gold medals and two silver medals. Indiana’s Clark finished second after a breakout championship that included personal best times in the 50, 100 and 200-yard freestyle events, while Sims’ fellow Wolverine Bellard placed third. For Northwestern, Nordmann was the highest-placing Wildcat in the high point standings at 45th overall, with Ervin the only other Northwestern swimmer in the top 100, finishing 68th.
One Big Observation
Like last year, Northwestern was without star power at Big Ten Championships.
In 2025, the ‘Cats’ top individual finisher was senior swimmer Nikki Venema, who placed 73rd in the meet’s high point standings. Nordmann, then a first-year, was the only other top 100 finisher for the Wildcats, placing 92nd with B-final finishes in the 500-yard freestyle and 1650-yard freestyle. This year, though both Nordmann and Lindsay Ervin managed to finish ahead of Venom’s team-best finish in 2025, the ‘Cats once again saw just two swimmers finish in the top 100, struggling once again to post A-final worthy times.
Granted, focusing on the ‘Cats’ absence of top 100 high point swimmers is somewhat of a “glass half empty” outlook. Northwestern has featured solid depth in 2025 and 2026, with seven swimmers finishing 100-150 at Big Ten’s last year and eight swimmers doing the same this year. While the ‘Cats are in the bottom half of the Big Ten for swimmers finishing 1-99, if you expand the spectrum to 150, the ‘Cats are well in the top half of the conference. That depth is important.
Nevertheless, the bottom line is that while Northwestern has grown a lot as a program in recent years under head coach Rachel Stratton-Mills, the ‘Cats’ repeat ninth place finish served as a harsh reality check that the ‘Cats won’t be able to make strides in the Big Ten standings without more star power. Depth is only able to take the ‘Cats so far without all-conference talent.
Fortunately for Northwestern, big recruits are on the way. In the fall, Flawia Kamzol, the No. 20 recruit in the Class of 2026, and Xintong Wang, the No. 97th recruit in the Class of 2026, will be welcomed to Evanston as two of the highest rated recruits of the Stratton-Mills era. Moreover, future classes will be even more exciting, with Lucy Velte and Annabeth Town, the No. 14 and No. 41 recruits in the Class of 2027, respectively, on the way in a year-and-a-half. Future Northwestern seasons will be defined by whether or not Stratton-Mills and co. can develop these big talents into reliable star performers, while maintaining the depth its featured the last two years.
