March 19, 2016

Miller Closes NCAA Championships, Decorated Career Saturday

ATLANTA – Kansas senior Chelsie Miller closed one of the most successful careers by a Jayhawk swimmer with her third and final top-45 swim in the 200-yard butterfly at the NCAA Championships Saturday.

Miller swam a 1:59.13 in morning preliminaries to finish 41st overall, adding to a meet performance that also saw her finish 42nd in the 200-yard individual medley and earn All-America First Team honors with an eighth-place finish in the 400 IM. The latter swim gave Kansas 11 team points, good enough to help the Jayhawks tie for 34th in the team standings.

The Georgia Bulldogs emerged at the top of the team standings after 21 events to claim the 2016 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship. During the meet, a total of 38 records were broken, including five NCAA and American records. In Miller’s event Saturday, Louisville senior Kelsi Worrell swam the second-fastest 200 fly ever in prelims (1:50.61) and was near that time when she captured the event title.

The Houston native has been KU’s lone participant at the NCAA meet the last three seasons and has led the Jayhawks to two of the program’s best finishes at the Big 12 Swimming and Diving Championships in the last three years. In 2014, Miller earned Swimmer of the Meet honors at the Big 12 Championship and became the Jayhawks’ first Big 12 individual event title winner.

Miller’s 2016 nationals experience peaked Friday when she reached the finals for the first time in her career, adding All-America accolades in the 400 IM after earning honorable mention in each of the previous two seasons while finishing 15th and 13th, respectively.

The meet marks the end of Kansas’ NCAA competition season, during which the Jayhawks went 9-4 in dual competition before posting their highest point total ever at the Big 12 Championships. One of several Olympic Trials qualifiers for Kansas, Miller will turn her attention towards swimming fast at the end of the summer at Omaha’s CenturyLink Center.

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