Kennedi Dobson Building Momentum With Pan Pacs Qualification, Stellar College Debut
At this summer’s World Junior Championships, two American women blasted performances quick enough to qualify them for the senior-level team bound for the Pan Pacific Championships next summer. One was Rylee Erisman, the 16-year-old sprint prodigy who won five golds and three silvers to establish herself as the meet’s top performer. The other was Kennedi Dobson, a mid-distance freestyler who picked up bronze in the 400 freestyle while taking fourth in the 200 free at the junior meet.
Erisman was long considered a serious threat to nab a spot on the Pan Pacs team; Dobson, not so much, not after a series of disappointing swims two months earlier at U.S. Nationals.
But Dobson shined in Otopeni, swimming a time of 4:06.66 to secure bronze in the 400 free and become the third-fastest American female eligible for Pan Pacs selection. That was a huge drop from her previous best time of 4:09.46 and almost four seconds quicker than the 4:10.58 she managed at Nationals. In the 200 free, Dobson swam a time of 1:57.45 to cut three tenths from her best time, and she finished the year as the 10th-fastest American swimmer in the event.
Now, she will spend the next 10 months with one eye on Pan Pacs, but Dobson has her debut season of college swimming to focus on first. And in her debut meet at the University of Georgia, the Levittown, Pa., native was brilliant with three individual victories.
Competing against South Carolina, Dobson won the 1000-yard free in 9:29.94, which made her the third-fastest swimmer in the country this season behind Florida’s Julie Brousseau and Texas’ Jillian Cox, the reigning national champion in the 500 and 1650 free. Only three swimmers went under 9:30 all of last season, so Dobson finds herself in exceptional company. The time was her lifetime best by three seconds and put her just outside the top-25 all-time in the event.
After racing the 40-lap event, Dobson had just one event to rest before the 200 free, and she picked up another win in 1:43.40, another best time and quicker than it took to reach the consolation final at last season’s NCAA Championships. Her third win came in the 500 free, her mark of 4:36.32 representing a half-second drop from her best. The time would have finished sixth in the A-final at last year’s championship meet. Finally, Dobson’s 400 free relay leadoff time of 48.96 was only four hundredths shy of her best.
For swimmers at the elite level, best times come rarely, typically at midseason or end-of-season championship events. Best times at dual meets are rare. Three best times at a single dual meet, all within a 90-minute span, all in the events in which Dobson distinguished herself in high school? That is borderline unheard of.
The results got better when the Bulldogs raced at Georgia Tech’s dual meet tournament. In Atlanta, Dobson dropped her 500 free time to 4:33.61, a further two-and-a-half-second drop from her already-stunning debut. Cox was the only swimmer who swam that fast at last year’s NCAA Championships, and Dobson ranks as the fastest swimmer in the country thus far this season. Additionally, Dobson surpassed her best time in the 100 free with a 48.75, and she was just off her bests in the 200 backstroke and 200 IM.
Having carried her momentum from the World Junior Championships into the college season, Dobson could be in position to challenge for SEC titles and NCAA top-three finishes this spring. One year after Cox arrived on the college scene and immediately dominated the distance races, she might have to look to an SEC rival school for an even younger swimmer chasing her down.
