It started simply enough. Kate Douglass was an elite national swimming recruit from New York who decided to take a recruiting trip to Virginia, attracted by the academics and the energy of the new head coach, Todd DeSorbo. It was her junior year of high school, in 2018, and DeSorbo’s first season leading the Cavaliers.
“He was selling being the one who would help UVA win its first national championship,” Douglass tells Sports Illustrated.
That seemed grandiose at the time. Virginia was a Top 10 program, but far removed from the power programs clustered at the top of the sport: Stanford, California and a rotating cast of Michigan, Texas, Texas A&M and Louisville. Breaking through that ceiling was a daunting proposition.
A couple of Douglass’s classmates on the USA Swimming junior national team joined her on the visit. Everything clicked. Maddie Donohoe from Annandale, Va., Ella Nelson from Nashville, and Douglass decided they would go to school together.
“Maddie and Ella committed, and then it was like, ‘Well, I have to go there, this is going to be so much fun,’ ” Douglass recalls.
The fun was just beginning. After COVID-19 canceled the 2020 championships, the Cavaliers quickly took over the sport.
“It was a shock how fast it happened,” she says. “I don’t know whether I believed it as a first-year, then two years later it’s happening.”
This week, Virginia is favored to win its sixth straight NCAA women’s swimming and diving championship. If they do it, the Cavaliers will set a record for the longest consecutive streak of national swimming titles, men or women, and tie for the fourth-longest Division I women’s streak in any sport. It’s also the longest active championship streak in Division I.
“It just kind of snowballed,” says DeSorbo, who envisioned building a program in the mold of Cal, a public school with elite academics as a draw for swimmers looking to get the best of both educational and athletic worlds.
Douglass and her classmates began the avalanche and it has continued ever since, fed by DeSorbo’s recruiting and coaching. Not only has Virginia taken over at the collegiate level, it is the primary feeder of the U.S. women’s Olympic team.
Douglass, sisters Alex and Gretchen Walsh, distance freestyler Paige Madden and Emma Weber all have won medals in the past two Olympic Games while training under DeSorbo at Virginia. Douglass has won two gold medals, two silver and a bronze; Alex Walsh has a silver; Gretchen Walsh has two gold and two silver; Madden (who trained elsewhere in 2024) has two silver and a bronze; and Weber has a gold as a relay alternate.
Midway between Olympic Games, the incredibly versatile Douglass and 100-meter butterfly long course world-record holder Gretchen Walsh join Katie Ledecky, Torri Huske and Regan Smith as the most important American women swimmers.
Then there are the current Cavaliers who were teenage American Olympians before joining DeSorbo at Virginia: Claire Curzan earned a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021; and Katie Grimes competed in both of the last two Olympics and won a silver in ’24. That’s the power of DeSorbo’s recruiting.
The breakthrough class of 2019 had coattails. Most importantly: the Walsh sisters were Nashville Aquatic Club teammates of Nelson’s. Beating out the likes of Stanford and Texas for them kept the snowball rolling downhill.
“We’ve had an influx of talent,” DeSorbo says. “That’s why you win.”
DeSorbo has had a talent for convincing his swimmers how good they can be, even if they didn’t believe him at first. He told Douglass she would be an Olympian, which she doubted—she wasn’t even sure how much she still liked the sport when she arrived at Virginia. With the 6' 3", extra-flexible and athletic Gretchen Walsh, he set the bar even higher, telling her she would break world records.
“He’s very confident in your abilities,” says Douglass. “I think his confidence really helps make the team what it is.”
The current Virginia team lacks the singular dominant figure of a Douglass, whose college career ended in 2024, or the Walsh sisters, who competed at the NCAA level through the ’25 season. Douglass won 15 titles in individual and relay events in three NCAA championships, going a perfect 7 for 7 in both ’22 and ’23. Alex Walsh won 23 NCAA titles across five seasons. Gretchen won 25 titles in four collegiate seasons.
Those totals will be hard to match. Gretchen Walsh owns four current NCAA individual records, in the 50-yard freestyle, 100 free, 100 backstroke and 100 fly. Douglass owns 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley. The Walsh sisters also have their names in the NCAA record books on four out of five relays.
But Virginia also possesses greater depth than ever. The Cavaliers actually have more NCAA qualifiers this year than the maximum of 20, having to leave two swimmers off the roster. DeSorbo’s squad has the top individual qualifier in four events, with at least one athlete in the top five in every event but one. (Curzan and freestyler Anna Moesch seem poised for big NCAA meets, among others.) And the Cavaliers have the fastest times of the season in all five relays.
“A lot of people externally—and maybe even internally—thought we wouldn’t be able to continue the level of success after Gretchen and Alex last year,” DeSorbo says. “But we haven’t had just one person step up, we’ve had five or six or seven. We’re deeper than we’ve ever been.
“I think Gretchen was so much larger than life, it almost cast a shadow on everyone else. Now they’re blossoming after stepping into the light.”
The dominance is expected to continue this week at Georgia Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center. Virginia’s dynasty might have come out of nowhere, but it’s not going back anytime soon.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Virginia Women’s Swim Program Nearing Unprecedented Record.
