AUBURN, Ala. – After a successful Orange & Blue meet, head coach Ryan Wochomurka and the Auburn Swim and Dive team prepare for the SMU Classic and UNC-Wilmington Invite for the Tigers’ first official action of the 2024-25 season.
The SMU Classic is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. CT on Friday, Oct. 11, while the UNC-Wilmington Invite will start Saturday the 12th at noon CT. Both meets will be live-streamed. Live results will be available on the Meet Mobile app.
The last time fans saw the team in action was back at the 2024 NCAA Division I Championships in Indianapolis, Indiana and Athens, Georgia.
During NCAAs, the women placed 19th, moving to the top 20 for the first time since 2019. Lawson Ficken, Elizaveta Klevanovich, Meghan Lee, Anastasia Makarova, Kensley Merrit, Lexie Mulvihill, Polina Nevmovenko and Emma Steckiel all combined for 18 All-America honors. Ficken, Klevanovich, Makarova, Mulvihill and Nevmovenko all return to the Plains this season.
Divers Ashlynn Sullivan and Abigail Farrar also each qualified for their first NCAA Championships appearance.
On the men’s side, 11 swimmers earned a berth to Indianapolis, scoring over 100 points for Auburn to finish 12th overall. Of the 10 student-athletes to secure All-American Honors (Henry Bethel, Michael Bonson, Sohib Khaled, Kalle Makinen, Mason Mathias, Danny Schmidt, Aidan Stoffle, Nate Stoffle and Logan Tirheimer) nine of them return for the 2024-25 campaign. Only Aidan Stoffle moved on to bigger and better things after graduating last spring.
Wochomurka and head diving coach John Fox bring in an impressive class to both the swim and dive teams for the upcoming season, including Olympian Emily Hallifax who competed for her home country of France in the 2024 Paris Games.