Having nothing short of a spectacular swimming season, Mia Prater (‘27) became Luther’s first national qualifier in eight years and represented the Norse at the NCAA DIII Swimming and Diving Championships on March 20-23.
At the American Rivers Conference Championships on February 22-24, Prater broke a Luther school record in the women’s 50 freestyle with a time of 23.06. While a time of 22.75 or faster would have resulted in an automatic qualification for the national meet, Prater’s record-breaking time resulted in an invitation to the NCAA Championships.
Prater made the trip with Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving head coach Aaron Zander (‘10) to Greensboro, North Carolina for the four-day swim meet. She competed in three events: the women’s 50 freestyle, the women’s 100 freestyle and the women’s 100 backstroke. When a swimmer qualifies for one event at the NCAA championships, they are permitted to enter into two more events as well, whether or not they have “cuts” (a time standard a swimmer has to meet) in those events.
“It was definitely stressful,” Prater said. “[The 50 freestyle] especially, I didn’t quite know what to expect.”
After the A-R-C season concluded February 24, Prater had a buffer of nearly a month to prepare for nationals. With a small group of teammates by her side, Prater began a training regimen led by Zander to prepare for her national debut.
“The rebound [from A-R-C] is really hard, but it was helped out a lot by the group of people who kept swimming with her,” Zander said. “Swimming by yourself is very challenging, so that group of people was very essential to her mental wellbeing over the last month of training.”
At the NCAA championship, Prater swam a 23.41 in the women’s 50 freestyle prelims, which qualified her for the finals. In the finals session, Prater dropped a tenth of a second, placing 12th with a time of 23.31 and garnering All-American Honorable Mention honors. As Prater went into the meet being seeded fifth in the 50 freestyle, she was a bit disappointed with this finish.
“I just had to take a step back and remind myself that my goal was just to make it here,” Prater said. “I not only made it here, but also made it back to finals.”
“To finish 12th at nationals is really impressive, especially in the 50 [freestyle]” Coach Zander said. “The 50 [freestyle] record got broken by two different people [Kaley McIntyre of New York University and Alex Turvey of Pomona-Pitzer] this year at nationals so there was some big time competition.”
As for the women’s 100 backstroke, Prater posted a career-best time with a time of 58.35. She placed 38th overall and now holds the second fastest 100 backstroke time in Luther history, positioned only behind Luther’s last national swimming qualifier, Clare Slagel (‘16).
“I dropped a ton of time [in the 100 backstroke],” Prater said. “I was seeded dead last going into it, so I had no expectation for myself. I think that [feeling less pressured] made it a little better too.”
Finally, in the women’s 100 freestyle, Prater capped off her national meet with a time of 52.37 in the prelims and placed 50th overall. This time was three tenths of a second shy of her performance at the A-R-C championship meet, where Prater finished in 51.89 — the fastest 100 freestyle time in A-R-C history and second-fastest Luther time ever.
On the heels of her recent successes this year, Prater looks to the future and has a few goals in mind. As a first-year, Prater has plenty of time to make these goals a reality.
“It’d be great to make it back to nationals,” Prater said. “And I want to break that 100 [freestyle] record.”
