Finishing ahead of an Olympic gold medalist in the process, Arrowhead High School alumna Campbell Stoll won the NCAA Division I championship in the 200-yard butterfly, swimming for the University of Texas on March 21.
Competing at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Stoll set a pool record with her swim of 1 minute, 50.26 seconds, nearly a full two seconds faster than her preliminary time. That was just ahead of Indiana freshman Alex Shackell (1:50.40), who happens to have two Olympic medals from the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Shackell, who didn’t swim in the finals in Paris but did compete in preliminary races in her medal-winning relays, won gold with the 4×100-meter medley and silver in the 4×200-meter freestyle, not to mention two more golds at the 2024 World Championships. She also took sixth in the 200-meter butterfly at those Olympics.
Stoll’s win is almost certainly the first NCAA Division I individual swimming championship for a female swimmer from southeastern Wisconsin since Kathy Treible of Brookfield Central, who won three breaststroke events for Florida at the inaugural NCAA women’s swimming and diving championships in 1982, along with three titles in the previous format in 1981.
Cedarburg alumna Katie Drabot most recently won three relay titles with Stanford in 2018 and 2019. Beata Nelson of Verona, located near Madison, won three NCAA individual titles for the University of Wisconsin in 2019.
“It’s definitely an honor to kind of continue the legacy of the ‘fly school,’ being from Texas,” Stoll said afterward in an interview posted by SwimSwam.
“Emma Sticklen always talked to me before our races, ‘When I’m done, you’ve got to carry the torch.'”
Sticklen won three 200 fly titles from 2023 through 2025 for Texas, and now the torch has indeed been passed. It’s the first time Texas has been the sole winner of an event four straight years since 1985-88.
Stoll’s 400-yard medley relay team took fifth with a school-record time (3:24.64), and she took seventh in the 100 butterfly. Perhaps crucially, she missed the finals in the 400 individual medley by less than one second. Had she made the final, she would have had only seven minutes between finals races, perhaps compromising her ability to win the butterfly.
She now has four All-American nods in her career.
Stoll won six individual state titles during her time at Arrowhead, including three wins in the individual medley and three in the butterfly. Her time in the 200 IM (1:56.37), set in 2022, stands as the state record.
Texas took third as a team in the event (376.5 points), well behind national champion powerhouse Virginia (589).
Brookfield East alumna Maggie Wanezek, a sophomore at Wisconsin, also had a standout meet with a pair of second-place finishes.
In her backstroke events, only Virginia’s Claire Curzan was faster, setting meet records in both. Wanezek took second in the 200-yard backstroke with her time of 1:47.73, behind only the junior Curzan (1:46.10).
Wanezek tied for second in the 100-yard backstroke with her time of 49.62 seconds in an event Curzan won with 48.24.
Maggie Wanezek paired with sister Abby Wanezek to finish strong in four relays, including a 12th-place finish with Lucie Delmas and Brooke Corrigan in the 400 medley.
The Wanezeks, Arrowhead alumna Hailey Tierney and Corrigan also took 12th in the 200 medley relay.
The Wanezeks, Izzy Enz (Madison Edgewood) and Blair Stoneburg took 14th in the 800 free relay, and the Wanezeks, Stoneburg and Tierney took 15th in the 200 free relay.
The Wanezeks’ father, Tom, won 10 WIAA championships in Wisconsin and went on to swim at Indiana. His sisters Andrea (Wisconsin), Tina (Wisconsin) and Sarah (Texas) all swam collegiately, with Sarah winning Big 12 Swimmer of the Year three times with the Longhorns. She took second in the 50 free at the NCAA Championships in 2005.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Arrowhead’s Campbell Stoll wins NCAA swimming title for Texas
Reporting by JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
