By Claudia Gohn
As the 2020 NCAA swimming season neared its end, UVA swimmer Kate Douglass found herself eyeing the summer’s Olympic trials. She’d finished the season strong, and she kept working hard, dreaming of the competition in Tokyo.
Then COVID happened. The Olympics got postponed and the trials got called off. Douglass was undeterred, though. “It’s just more motivation to work hard,” the New York native told C-VILLE last year.
That attitude paid off for Douglass and her teammates. Now she’s one of five swimmers on the UVA women’s team heading to Tokyo this summer after qualifying at a national trial earlier this month. Douglass will swim the 200 meter individual medley, and will be joined by fellow Cavaliers Catie DeLoof (4×100 freestyle relay), Paige Madden (400 freestyle and 4×200 freestyle relay), Alex Walsh (200 individual medley), and Emma Weyant (400 individual medley). UVA’s head swim coach Todd DeSorbo is also joining the team as an assistant coach.
The U.S. Olympic swim team will send 26 women to the competition in total, meaning almost 20 percent of the national team comes from UVA.
“It’s really a dream come true,” says DeSorbo.
The qualifying triumphs come after a roller coaster of a year.
The team had to adapt its practice regimen to pandemic regulations, such as allowing fewer swimmers in the pool at once during workouts. Additionally, because of ongoing maintenance at the UVA pool, the team had to travel to different pools to train. With all of these changes, DeSorbo says, “the team’s performances this year—in the collegiate season and then beyond to their performances at the Olympic trials—are really even more extraordinary because of the circumstances and challenges that we had all year.”
Douglass and DeSorbo were also excited about what the Olympians mean for the future of the UVA swim program. “I don’t think a year ago anyone thought that the UVA swim team would put five Olympians on the team,” Douglass says. “It’s just pretty crazy that now UVA can be thought of as a school that will put people on the Olympic team, and I think that’s going to draw a lot more attention than UVA has previously for swimming recruits.”
And ACC competitors should watch out next year, too: UVA’s swimmers will have an extra summer’s worth of experience working together, which could be beneficial heading into the regular season.
Douglass recalls the feeling when her fingertips touched the side of the pool at the end of the 200-meter individual medley qualifying race. She took second and Walsh, her teammate, finished first, meaning both would compete in the Olympics.
“When I touched the wall on the 200 IM and saw that I had gotten second place and Alex had gotten first place, we just looked at each other and like, I can’t even describe the feeling,” Douglass says. “Alex goes, ‘We’re going to Tokyo.’ It was just, I mean, it was an amazing feeling, knowing that you both just made the Olympic team next to each other.”