2021 NCAA Champion in the 500 freestyle Jake Magahey will return to Georgia to use his COVID-19 fifth year of eligibility, the school announced on Tuesday.
Magahey has been a consistent ‘A’ finalist and NCAA scorer for the Bulldogs during his undergraduate career. In 2021, his freshman season, he won the NCAA title in the 500 freestyle swimming a 4:07.97. He also was 2nd in the 1650 free and 12th in the 200 free. He scored 42 individual points, making him the top scorer on the Georgia roster, helping them to a 4th place finish.
A year later, Magahey swam to a 1-2 finish with teammate Matt Sates in the 500 freestyle at NCAAs. Sates won the NCAA title while Magahey was 2nd. Magahey also finished 4th in the 1650 freestyle to score a total of 32 individual points, the 3rd most on the team.
In 2023, he once again made the top 8 at NCAAs in both the 500 and 1650 freestyles. He finished 3rd in both events to score a total of 32 individual points.
This past season, he changed his NCAA lineup. He finished 3rd in the 500, 5th in the 400 IM, and 15th in the 200 butterfly. His 32 individual led the team as graduate student Bradley Dunham had the 2nd most individual points with 13.
The return of Magahey is key as four out of the team’s nine individual NCAA qualifiers were grad students this past season while Magahey was the only senior. In addition to individual qualifiers, fifth years scored a total of 26 individual points while the team scored 116 total. If Magahey did not return, the team would have lost almost all of its individual scorers and half of their points. Now, they return about three-quarters of their points (not accounting for relay legs).
With Magahey’s event lineup change, he will have the opportunity to train with the #4 ranked recruit in the class of 2024 Drew Hitchcock who led the class in the 200 fly last spring in the junior re-rank.
That’s some impressive consistency. That’s got to rank him top 3 in points scored in his recruiting class, right?
Glad to swimmers staying in the schools, still remember watching those freshman NCAA champs….
It feels like yesterday he won the 500 free as a freshman. Time flies!
Great news! Hope Luca comes back too! He never was in transfer portal I don’t think so that. Is a good sign!? Their relays need him badly!
Lets go! Much needed. Interested to see if Luca is coming back now that Bowman left ASU, UGA is still in his bio 👀
Awesome news. Fun swimmer towatch
Off topic: Gretchen Walsh’s bio has finally been updated for NCAA’s Leon Marchand’s needs to be updated as well.