Day 4 of Swim Championships brings historic title

It was the final two events of the 2026 NAIA Swim and Dive National Championships in Elkhart, Ind. 

Every athlete from every team stood around the pool.

Every fan in the stands stood on their feet.

And every mouth was screaming, cheering on their team.

It started with the Women's 400-yard Freestyle Relay. The Master's began with Megan Sutanto and Kylee Sears, and by the time Clara Patterson dove in for the third leg, TMU was behind by nearly a second.

But Patterson swam an event-high 49.87 over her 100 yards, eliminating that 1-second difference to event-favorite Keiser at the wall.

That's when Katherine Dyer dove into the water.

Dyer, who previously in the day had won the 100-yard Free, her second national title this year and fourth of her career, out-swam everyone to give The Master's their first national championship in a relay.

And the team broke an 11-year old NAIA record by nearly a second in the process.

"The ladies delivered pure magic," said an ecstatic TMU Head Coach Curren Bates after the meet. "It was the longest standing relay record in NAIA history, and it's now gone. This capped multiple heartbreaking runner-up finishes earlier in the meet for the women."

Then the men took their marks for the 40th and final event of the national championships.

And while the team of Izaiah Trevino-Lozano, Evan Nail, Charley Sears and Dylan Crane did not pull off a dramatic championship win, TMU did finish fourth, the best finish ever for a men's relay team at nationals.

But what DID happen in the race is The Master's out-touched Milligan by just 0.03 seconds. That 3-point swing between fourth and fifth moved the team up to seventh from eighth in the final standings, the team's best finish at the national championships in program history.

Other notable achievements on the final day of competition included placing three women in the 100 Free final, won by Dyer in 49.64. Sutanto finished fourth in a lifetime-best time of 51.17, and Sears took eighth with a 52.40. Those three swimmers scored 46 combined points in just this event.

Patterson qualified fourth in the 200 Backstroke and finished fifth with a time of 2:01.98.

As a team the women from Master's finished fifth, their best team finish ever.

In the Men's 200 Butterfly, Trevino-Lozano scored 17 points for the team with his second-place finish in a time of 1:45.71. He ended his first season with the Mustangs as a national champion (200 Free) and a pair of runner-up finishes.

In the Men's 200 Breaststroke, Evan Nail shattered the team record with a 1:58.38 to finish fourth, just 0.06 seconds out of third.

Crane placed 10th overall in the 100 Free with a personal best 44.53, good for second-place in the B Final and a valuable seven points toward the team's total.