SMU will send six swimmers to the NCAA Championships in Atlanta this week, competing in four individual events and two relays starting on Wednesday.
Jack Berube and Francis Brennan will each swim two individual events, while Eli Likins, Harold Lockhart, Sage Sungail and Jack Forrest will represent the Mustangs in the 400 and 800 freestyle relays. The group will also be joined by divers Luke Sitz and Grant Cates.
It marks another step forward for an SMU program with a rich history that includes 29 NCAA champions, but none since 1998.
"It just means that our program is getting better and better and better," SMU head coach Greg Rhodenbaugh said. "But you see that from the school records, there's only one school record that we haven't set since I've been here, but I coached the guy that holds it, so yeah, we're getting better and better and better."
Berube is part of that progress. He holds two individual school records and is part of the record-holding 400 medley relay.
After narrowly missing the NCAA Championships last year, he qualified in the 100 and 200 backstroke and is aiming to finish in the Top 16 and score team points.
"The goal over the summer was to put myself in a position to make NCAAs in the midseason," Berube said. "When the midseason meet came around, I hovered around the 19th place marker (in the 200) until ACC came, where I then dropped another second from my midseason time and now sit 18th."
There's also strength in numbers.
If there's only one or two swimmers advancing, there isn't much competition in the pool. But between the six of them, there is a lot of good work that can get done.
"A great group of six guys in the water at one point in time is uplifting and helps," Berube said. "It helps everyone maintain their kind of control and kind of make sure they're on top of the ball, and to see the hard work that you know these guys have put together is pretty cool. And how many have qualified this year can send a message to everyone else on the team, like, 'Hey, bring more guys. Take more steps forward.'"
Brennan will also make his NCAA debut, qualifying in the 200 and 500 freestyle. He reached the A Final at ACCs in the 200 and is the program's first freshman NCAA qualifier since 2009.
He has dropped three seconds in the 200 this season, breaking the school record multiple times, most recently to 1:32.13. That time is what he's swimming against in Atlanta.
"I usually go based off times," Brennan said. "I find where you place is nice, obviously, but as long as you've done all you can to be better than you were before, you've got to be happy with yourself."
Brennan is also part of a freshman class that has quickly elevated SMU's competitiveness.
"Francis has really gotten a lot better quickly, and a lot of our freshmen this year got better quickly," Rhodenbaugh said. "That freshman class was the fastest class to be brought in. … Francis, Andy (Baklanov), Trey (Clervi) and Thad (Austin), all those guys, have gotten so much faster. Francis is part of that group and kind of a leader of that group, and he's become a leader of the team, so that's pretty neat to see."
Along with his individual events, Brennan is an option to swim in the relays along with Lockhart, Sungail and Forrest. That veteran trio returns after competing in the same events last year and will have one final NCAA meet together.
"It's nice to get one more opportunity to swim with the guys that I've been here for so long with and the guys I've been training here for so long with," Lockhart said. "It's nice to kind of go out on a sort of high note."
Forrest and Sungail have spent their entire careers with the Mustangs, growing alongside the program over the years. In 2024, Forrest was part of the 800 free relay that earned All-America status — the first Mustang relay to do so in over a decade.
"When I was being recruited in high school, our coaches told us that the goal was to build SMU into a program that was competitive at the NCAA level," Forrest said. "And at the time we hadn't qualified relays for SMU in some time. So getting to spend my entire four years at SMU and then be in a position to end at the NCAA level is really cool for me."
That torch will be carried by swimmers like Likins. The sophomore is part of the 400 relay, and getting early experience competing in meets like the ACC and NCAA championships is something he and the rest of the returners can build on.
"I think this will be a great experience for me leading into my next two years here," Likins said. "I think the coaches are building a great program here that we can be Top 20 nationally as a team in the next couple of years. So, I think having this experience this year and being able to carry that into next year with training and our competitions, I think it will be great."
Rhodenbaugh, a former SMU swimmer, assistant coach and head coach, returned seven years ago to rebuild the program and sees this group as progress.
"That was kind of the whole idea of coming back, just to try and get it back competitive and toward the Top 10, because that's what I was used to when I was here before," Rhodenbaugh said. "So that's been fun to have people that can score in the Top 8 and can score and that kind of stuff. We've got a ways to go. The wave has accelerated away, but we're accelerating quicker than the wave, so we're catching it. We've just got to keep doing it. We'll be there in the next year or two."
