McKenzie Siroky, Lucy Bell Enter College Season as Breaststroke Favorites
Over the past four years, a group of internationally-accomplished breaststrokers have dominated the 100 and 200-yard events at the NCAA Women’s Championships. University of Virginia stars Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh won multiple individual titles in the stroke while Lydia Jacoby, the Tokyo Olympic champion in the 100-meter breast, picked up a 100-yard win during the first year of her abbreviated Texas career. Neither Anna Elendt (Texas) nor Mona McSharry (Tennessee) ever won an individual national championship, but both were contenders for years before and during their successful international runs.
But with the departures of Walsh and McSharry following their fifth seasons of collegiate competition last season, these events look vastly different entering the 2025-26 campaign — with a lot less experience expected among the rankings leading into the NCAA Championships. In fact, of the two most accomplished breaststrokers returning to collegiate racing this year, one is a sophomore who was nowhere on the national radar 18 months ago while the other did not even race breaststroke until last season.
McKenzie Siroky is a former Division I hockey recruit who made a life-changing decision during her senior year of high school, choosing to take a gap year and pivot to swimming. Since then, Siroky has reached a final at Olympic Trials, placed third at the NCAA Championships in the 100 breast and qualified for the World Championships team, winning a dramatic swim-off for the No. 2 spot among U.S. women in the 50-meter breast.
Now, Siroky is the top-returning finisher in the 100 breast from the 2025 NCAA Championships. Her top challenger should be Florida’s Anita Bottazzo, another sophomore out of the SEC and the sixth-place finisher in the 100-meter breast at Worlds. Walsh, McSharry, Siroky and Bottazzo were the only swimmers to clock times under 58 seconds at last year’s NCAAs. Bottazzo has already been brilliant in the early stages of the 2025-26 season, going 56.87 in the 100 breast in dual-meet action (and 55.96 on a relay).
Lucy Bell — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Meanwhile, favorite status in the 200 breast belongs to Stanford senior Lucy Bell, a new name in the sense that she was an individual medley and butterfly specialist prior to last season. Bell had been a top-four national finisher in both IM events in 2024 while winning the NCAA B-final in the 200 butterfly, but breaststroke became her specialty this past season as she pulled away from the NCAA A-final to score a victory, a key result in Stanford’s runnerup finish in the team standings.
While Siroky, Bottazzo and Bell are the big names to watch entering this season, there is also a strong chance for swimmers from non-powerhouse teams to build on their results from last season and make a significant impact.
Topping the list of surprise contenders is Mackenzie Miller, who placed second to Bell in the 200 breast and seventh in the 100 last season. Miller swam her first three seasons of college eligibility at BYU before transferring to Fresno State for her senior season. In the 200, Miller got her time down to 2:05.03 last season, putting her less than a second behind Bell and among the top-20 performers in history.
Also in that 200-yard final were Duke’s Kaelyn Gridley, who has now finished fourth nationally in consecutive seasons, and Washington State’s Emily Lundgren, the first swimmer from her school to score at the NCAA Championships since 2007. The other returning A-finalists are Virginia’s Aimee Canny, better known for her freestyle skills, and Cal’s Abby Herscu, whose impressive summer results included a fourth-place finish in the 200-meter race at U.S. Nationals.
As for the 100, Miller and Gridley are both returning finalists, as are Texas’ Piper Enge and Cincinnati’s Joleigh Crye. Enge has stepped into the big shoes of Elendt and Jacoby as the top breaststroker on the Longhorns’ medley relays, both of which scored in the top-eight at last season’s national meet. Crye, meanwhile, is another standout from a school with little tradition of elite swimming. She was named Cincinnati’s Female Student Athlete of the Year after winning the Big-12 title in the 100 breast and then placing fourth in the event at the national meet.
The X-factor in the breaststroke races is a swimmer who owns an Olympic gold medal but has never finished top-eight at the NCAA Championships, Virginia’s Emma Weber. The Cavaliers junior has contributed to her team’s last two national titles, but her short course swimming has yet to match up to her long course results, which includes three gold medals at this summer’s World University Games. Given her propensity for impressive swims in big moments in the long course pool, an emergence from Weber this college season cannot be discounted when stacking up the national contenders in her main stroke.
