53-Second Butterflier Anna Quinn Transferring from UCLA to Duke

According to her former club coach, California native Anna Quinn will transfer to Duke University after one year at UCLA, as the Blue Devils continue big momentum heading into the 2015-2016 NCAA season.

While Quinn did not respond to a request for comment, her former club coach Lauren Hancock says that the decision was purely an academic one. “It was 100% an academic decision because she changed academic paths from Chemistry to Pre-Med,” Hancock said. “Anna was incredibly happy with her swim season and the support she received throughout her entire freshman year from coaches Cyndi (Gallagher) and Naya (Higashijma), as well as her teammates.”

“Duke’s CAPE program was the appeal,” Hancock noted. The program is designed to give “highly focused undergraduate female Duke athletes who have an interest in medicine…unprecedented access and insight into the medical world,” according to the program’s website.

Quinn had some success in her freshman year at UCLA, as part of a butterfly group that historically has been a strength of the Bruins’ program. She improved her 100 yard fly by half-a-second to settle at 53.95, but peaked in December at Winter Nationals before adding almost a second at the Pac-12 Championships.

Her best times in yards:

• 50 free – 24.21
• 100 free – 51.71
• 200 free – 1:50.07
• 500 free – 4:52.27
• 100 fly – 53.95
• 200 fly – 1:57.25
• 200 IM – 2:03.31
• 400 IM – 4:23.54

Her 200 fly followed a similar pattern – with a big improvement at multiple in-season meets, for a total of two seconds drop, but she again failed to match that success at her season-ending Pac-12 Championships.

She now joins a Duke butterfly group that is suddenly very crowded. Both of the team’s NCAA qualifiers last year swam at least one butterfly event at Nationals – Leah Goldman was 32nd in the 100 fly (season best was 52.28), Isabella Paez was 49th in the 100 fly (season best was 53.62), and Paez was 32nd in the 200 fly (season best was 1:56.92).

On top of that, one of Duke’s two early class of 2016 commits Kylie Jordan has bests of 53.5 in the 100 fly and 1:58.8 in the 200 fly.

Editor’s note: the other big early commit is Suzanne Dolan.

By the fall of 2016 or 2017, it’s possible that the Duke women will be hailed as the deepest butterfly group in the country. That’s from a program that until 2009 had a 200 fly record from 1981 (Nancy Hogshead – 2:00.0) and didn’t have a swimmer break 54 seconds in textile until 2010.

Quinn is originally from the Conejo Simi Swim Club.