T&T swim­mer and for­mer World Ju­nior 50m freestyle cham­pi­on Nikoli Black­man is among ten mem­bers of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee swim­ming team who will com­pete in the 2025 NCAA Men’s Swim­ming & Div­ing Cham­pi­onships, which splash­es off to­day and will run un­til Sat­ur­day in Fed­er­al Way, Wash­ing­ton.

Last year, the Vols took sixth at NCAAs, mark­ing the best fin­ish since 2001 and plac­ing in­side the top 10 for the sec­ond straight meet.

Based on the seed­ing head­ing in­to the cham­pi­onships, the Vols are pro­ject­ed to have sev­en cham­pi­onship fi­nal fin­ish­es by four dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als. In to­tal, six dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als are pro­ject­ed to score, in­clud­ing three in mul­ti­ple events.

The four Vols re­lay teams are al­so pro­ject­ed to fin­ish in­side the top eight.

Ten­nessee is favoured in five events head­ing in­to the meet, with Jor­dan Crooks hold­ing the top time in the 50 yards and 100 yards freestyles. The Big Or­ange al­so boasts the fastest 200-yard freestyle, 400-yard freestyle and 200-yard in­di­vid­ual med­ley re­lays so far this sea­son.

Last month, at the South­east­ern Cham­pi­onships, the Vols shat­tered the NCAA record in both the 200 yards freestyle re­lay (1:12.80) and the 400 yards freestyle re­lay (2:42.41), with both squads made up of Crooks, Gui Caribe, Black­man and Lamar Tay­lor.

In the 200 yards med­ley re­lay, the line­up of Tay­lor, Kevin House­man, Caribe and Crooks nar­row­ly missed a third na­tion­al record (1:20.15), clock­ing a 1:20.22 ef­fort to win gold.

Ten­nessee’s 400 med­ley re­lay checks in third na­tion­al­ly with a time of 2:59.69, us­ing 100 back school record hold­er Har­ri­son Lierz on the first leg and switch­ing Crooks and Caribe to the but­ter­fly and freestyle, re­spec­tive­ly.

In ad­di­tion to the two re­lay events which come off on Thurs­day (200m yards freestyle re­lay) and Sat­ur­day (400 yards freestyle re­lay). Black­man will al­so con­test the 50 yards freestyle on Thurs­day as well as the 200 yards freestyle on Fri­day and the 100 yards freestyle event on Sat­ur­day.

Af­ter swim­ming as a mem­ber of the 200-yard freestyle re­lay quar­tet at last year’s NCAA Cham­pi­onships, Black­man earned his first in­di­vid­ual qual­i­fi­ca­tion to this sea­son’s na­tion­al meet.

The sopho­more earned a bid in two events and was a mem­ber of the 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle re­lays that broke NCAA records last month at SECs.

Black­man will com­pete in the sprint freestyles af­ter rank­ing 23rd in the 100 yards freestyle (41.84) and 23rd in the 200 yards freestyle (1:32.12). He was a fi­nal­ist in both events at the SECs, plac­ing eighth in the 100 yards freestyle and 12th in the 200 yards freestyle.

He ranks top five in school his­to­ry in all three sprint freestyle events, high­light­ed by be­ing sec­ond in the 200 free.

The oth­er Vols swim­mers and divers to qual­i­fy in­clude divers Ben­nett Greene and Nick Stone and swim­mers Caribe (50 yards freestyle, 100 yards freestyle, 100 yards but­ter­fly); Crooks (50 yards freestyle, 100 yards freestyle, 200 yards free); Mar­tin Es­pern­berg­er (200 yards but­ter­fly); Jed Gar­ner (200 yards breast­stroke); Kevin House­man (100 yards breast­stroke); Björn Kam­mann (100 yards but­ter­fly, 200 yards but­ter­fly); Har­ri­son Lierz (100 yards back­stroke, 100 yards but­ter­fly); Pe­dro San­sone (100 yards freestyle); and Tay­lor (50 yards freestyle).