March 15, 2018
| NCAA WOMEN'S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS | | |
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COLUMBUS, Ohio - Penn State junior Ally McHugh (Philadelphia, Pa.) broke her own record in the women's 500 freestyle, winning the consolation finals to place ninth in the event Thursday at the 2018 the NCAA Women's Swimming & Diving Championships hosted by Ohio State in McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion.
In the morning, McHugh placed 10th in the preliminaries in 4:37.80, breaking her school record of 4:38.44 set at the Big Ten Championships in the same pool last month. She then continued to drop time in the evening, touching the wall first in the consolation finals in 4:36.17.
"She just got rolling," said Penn State head coach Tim Murphy. "She kept herself in the race early on, and then completed an awesome swim. It was a great way for her to start her meet off. Penn State is on the scoreboard, and she is excited about what she did tonight. We're very proud of her and she's excited about what she has coming up."
McHugh improved 11 places over her 20th-place finish (4:40.73) in the same event at the 2017 NCAA Championships.
The 500 free was the first of three events McHugh is competing in at NCAAs. Preliminaries resume Friday morning at 9 a.m., with McHugh competing in the 400 IM. She will enter ranking 14th (4:06.43) on the psych sheet, which is where she placed in the event last season. Thursday finals will begin Friday at 5 p.m. and will be telecast on ESPNU.
"She is probably going to have to be a little better than her seed time to sneak into the big heat," said Murphy. "She's been here before, and the 500 free today was a short race for her, so it will be interesting to see what she can do in the morning. She's off to a good start, and she usually continues to swim well when she gets off to a good start, but she's swimming against the best swimmers in the country, so nothing is going to come easy here."
McHugh is also slated to compete Saturday in the mile, starting at 6 p.m. and streamed live on WatchESPN. Her season-best time of 15:43.34 in the event was not only good enough for gold at the Big Ten Championships, it was a Big Ten Championships meet and Penn State school record. Only Stanford sophomore Katie Ledecky (15:03.31) has swam faster this season.
