Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we preview the upcoming Pro Swim Series in Austin and make our wild predictions for the 2026 year of Swimming.

Hannah Bellard turned heads last weekend when she topped the 200 fly field at the Indiana-Michigan dual meet. The reigning Big Ten Champion in the event, Bellard touched in 1:50.72, a Michigan school and Big Ten Conference record and the top time in the country by over a second, not to mention a huge PB for the junior. 

When we sat down with Bellard to discuss the swim and her season, we got an interesting piece of insight. In the spring of 2025, the rising junior felt like she was just going through the motions with her swimming. This was after winning a Big Ten Title in the 200 fly and becoming an NCAA All-American in the same event. After talking with her coaches, they decided it was best if Bellard take a month off and not compete in the summer. After coming back in the fall, the now junior felt refreshed and reenergized by her sport.

After seeing this swim in January, it certainly seems like that break is continuing to pay dividends for the Michigan Wolverine. 

Cody Miller signing onto to the Enhanced Games was a curveball, but not wholly unexpected, which is partly why we asked Miller to come on the podcast. For the record: SwimSwam has no commercial or financial affiliation with the Enhanced Games. We are covering it journalistically. That will make some people uncomfortable. But discomfort isn’t a disqualifier, especially when the moment is this consequential.

In this GMM Podcast, we sit down with Jake Gibbons, a talented young coach at one of the most powerful prep programs in swimming history, The Bolles School. Jake’s connection to Bolles is personal. He swam for the Bolles Sharks from 2013 to 2015, absorbing the culture, the expectations, and the weight of a program that has produced Olympic champions and global stars. From there, his path wasn’t linear. He detoured briefly through Yale before landing at Texas A&M, where his career sharpened into leadership as much as performance. At A&M, Jake captained the team, earned multiple CSCAA Scholar All-American honors, and etched his name into the Aggie record books with a 9:05.38 in the 1000-yard freestyle. He was also awarded the Texas A&M Distinguished Letterman Award, the school’s highest recognition for athletics, scholarship, and leadership.

There’s a certain quiet confidence that comes from longevity. You don’t need to thump your chest when the résumé does the talking. This GMM podcast brings together Thad Schultz, one of the most experienced coaches in swimming, and Erkhes Enkhtur, a rising international talent rewriting Mongolian swimming history books from the lanes of SPIRE Academy.

Recently, at the Katie Ledecky Invite, a swim meet hosted by Nation's Capital Swim Club and named for their most notable alumna, history was made. Katie Ledecky herself participated in the last night of competition, swimming in the 1,650 freestyle. The 14x Olympic medalist wowed her hometown crowd as she threw down a monstrous 14:59.62, breaking her own American and US Open records in the event and making her the first woman in history to dip under the 15-minute barrier.

This swim not only rippled across the entire current swimming landscape, but it will undoubtedly inspire swimmers for years to come. SwimSwam spoke with two young girls, Milly Birch and Emma Stein, who were at the venue during this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Milly, 14, swam in the lane next to Katie during the 1,650 while Emma, 11, was on deck watching with her friends. Listen to how Katie Ledecky is not only breaking down barriers for herself, but showing many more that they can do the same.

Kyle Sockwell has long branded himself as the “CEO of Fun,” but anyone who has worked with him behind the scenes knows that label only tells half the story. Sockwell, now the COO of the newly announced College Swimming League (CSL), has built a reputation in aquatic sports for something that’s surprisingly rare in this industry: clarity. Behind the scenes, he’s direct about what he knows and what he doesn’t. Clear about what’s possible and what isn’t. And refreshingly uninterested in spin or “gotcha” communication. That matters when the topic is a massive structural shifts in college swimming. The CSL announcement dropped December 9th and immediately became one of the most discussed developments in our sport. The league named former International Swimming League (ISL) Toronto Titans GM Rob Kent as CEO, with Sockwell operating alongside him as COO. In this GMM podcast, we briefly cover Kyle's start and evolution in sports media, and then we dig into the details surrounding CSL

Head Coach Matt Bowe is in his 3rd year at Michigan, and the results are starting to show. Recently, at the CSCAA Dual Meet Tournament, the UM women placed 2nd and the men were 3rd (out of 4 teams), both breaking school records. Both teams not only won very close matchups that came down to the last relay (women vs Tennessee and men vs Virginia), but the women also handed the Virginia women a rare loss in the 200 medley relay. Bowe came on the SwimSwam podcast to discuss how he has been building culture since arriving in Ann Arbor and what navigating the NCAA landscape has looked like in a post-House settlement world.

SwimSwam's Editor-in-Chief, Braden Keith, sat down with the new CEO of USA Swimming, Kevin Ring, for a candid conversation. Keith asked Ring 10 hard questions about the state of USA Swimming and what he will do to address those issues. Ring answered honestly and with some breaking news peppered in. This includes raising APA rates (athlete salaries) for the first time in over a decade and holding an SCM meet to help select rosters for SCM World Championships.