Howard University Punctuates Season of Destiny with First Conference Title in 34 Years

The Howard Bison swimming & diving team was the most-unlikely story to steal the 2022-2023 NCAA season, but they’ve done just that, starting with a roar and ending with an eruption to win their first conference title in 34 years on Saturday.

Conference Champs! Howard's Men's Swimming and Diving team celebrates its first conference title in 34 years! @HUSwimming @HUBisonSports @DarrenMHaynes

More: https://t.co/EVTx4x6yTa pic.twitter.com/VtYyndAHwB

— Tom Hunsicker (@TomSportsWUSA9) February 26, 2023

After finishing runners-up at last year’s Northeast Conference Championships, the Bison men won the 2023 title, which is the program’s first conference title since 1989.

• See the full roster for the 2023 NEC Champions here.

Senior Miles Simon, an Olympic Trials qualifier, was named the NEC Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet after breaking the Meet Record in the 200 IM, and also winning the 100 back and 200 back. Jordan Walker was named Outstanding Diver after sweeping the springboards. The coaching staffs won Swimming Staff of the Year for the second-straight season. That staff is led by Nic Askew, who is also the school’s head tennis coach, by the way. The school’s diving coach Courtenay Miller won Outstanding Dive Staff. The Bison won all of the men’s meet awards aside from Rookie of the Meet

But this is not just any story of success by a Division I mid-major program. This is a story of destiny – a destiny that the team manifested itself with its early-season energy.

Howard was the school that ignited the 2022-2023 collegiate season when they hyped the best-attended HBCU swim meet, and maybe the best-attended college dual meet ever, early in the season. That set off a ripple all the way to the top of the sport, where teams like the University of Texas caught the wave and pushed for better presentations, bigger promotion, and larger crowds for their dual meets.

That led to an incredible Sports Illustrated feature from swim-dad Robert Sanchez (whose daughter swims for Georgetown – the opposing team in that opening meet). As far as we can tell, they were the only college swim team to be featured in Sports Illustrated this year.

Howard University is the only collegiate swim team in the country where all members of the team are black. That includes coaches and support staff. They are also the only surviving swim team at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).

That makes their achievements this season outsized, because of the long history of racism in swimming and the relatively-low participation of black people in the sport, or even possessing the skill. Black children aged 5-19 drown at rates 5.5 times higher than white children in pools, according to Diversity in Aquatics.

As Black History Month winds down, Howard University’s swimming & diving team is becoming a touch-point, reaching outside of the sport, capturing new eyeballs, and making a difference. Along with swimmers like Olympic gold medalist Simone Manuel, the top male sprinters in the NCAA Jordan Crooks and Josh Liendo, and swimmers of prior generations like Cullen Jones and Maritza Correia moving into powerful administrative roles, there is now a growing roster of black role models in the sport.

If they can change narratives around Black people and swimming, not only is their success a matter of school and community pride, a matter of athletics, it is potentially a matter of sending a life-saving wave across America.

This matters, Howard swimming & diving matters, and this is the story of the 2022-2023 NCAA season.

2023 NEC Men’s Final Standings

1. Howard – 928
2. LIU – 759
3. St. Francis Brooklyn – 634
4. Wagner – 539

Howard is scheduled to conclude its season at the National Invitational Championship, which is a sub-championship designed for swimmers who didn’t qualify for the NCAA Championship meet.