Championship waters at Rice: Swim and dive win conference championship in dive’s first year

By Kathleen Ortiz     2/25/25 11:52pm

When senior Mimi Filkin touched the wall as the anchor of the 400-freestyle relay, she had no idea why her team was cheering so loudly.

The relay had finished fourth. Assistant coach Lauren Hurt ’24 started to cry and ran over to hug head coach Seth Huston. On the pool deck, other Rice swimmers were cheering and jumping up and down. Filkin, though, was still in the pool.

“I was so tired, my brain just wasn’t working,” Filkin said. “I was like, ‘Why is everyone so excited? We don’t even get a medal, we got fourth. Why is everyone so thrilled?’”

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It wasn’t until about two minutes later when senior Amelia Kane started to pull her out of the pool that Filkin realized they had won the conference championship.

“Dude, we did it,” Kane told Filkin. “You did it. We won.”

The relay team — also including junior Lily Cramer and freshmen Ava Portello and Reese Cole — earned 52 points, putting them 1.5 points ahead of Florida International University to win the meet.

“With a margin of 1.5 points, you have to think that every single thing we did all year meant something,” Hurt said. “All of it added up, from what we did in September to that 400-free relay at the end. Everybody’s contributions the entire year all led to that moment.”

Another key factor to this year’s American Athletic Conference championship was the addition of a dive team. In 2023, the team was fourth in the conference but outscored all teams in swimming points. In 2024, the Owls placed third overall, continuing to stay competitive even without diving points. 

In 2023 though, the AAC introduced team diving, where a team of three divers collectively does six total dives across the 1-meter, 3-meter and platform apparatuses. The points from the event, which became a scored part of the conference meet in 2024, count double, similar to swimming relays.

 “Almost 20% of the meet is diving,” Huston said. “You just can’t give up 20% of the meet and expect to just completely dominate the other 80%. The teams are just too diversified and good for that.”

Rice had two divers this year: junior Rylee Coyne and graduate student Megan Phillip. Coyne and Phillip, along with sophomore swimmer Catherine Eland who dove in the team diving event to fulfill the three-diver requirement, secured 136 points for the team.

“I never looked into the logistics of how many points diving would earn versus swimming [prior to coming to Rice],” Coyne said. “I knew that Rice had a really strong swim team, but I didn’t know that just the two of us could push it over the edge as much as it did.”

Even with the new divers, winning a conference championship was not what Huston wanted his swimmers to focus on all season, he said. 

“It’s really more about the process over the course of the year,” Huston said. “Then, developing as a team, developing individually, as an athlete, maximizing your contribution to the team, that kind of thing. If all those pieces come together, you might just get fortunate enough to win a conference championship.”

However, with the addition of the dive team, Filkin said the goal of winning a championship was more present this season than in the past.

“Immediately, when we found out that we would be getting a diving team, I was like, ‘Well, this is our opportunity,’” senior Arielle Hayon said. “I think everyone kind of saw it that way.”

Hayon defended her title and became undefeated in the 100-butterfly at the conference championship, winning the event the past four years. She also won the 200-butterfly at the meet for the third time.

“I remember winning that first conference championship individually was really huge,” Hayon said. “It was unexpected, and I felt really proud of myself, but it’s a totally different feeling to feel super proud of a team and understand that each and every individual played a part in that ring.”

Junior Ella Dyson, another repeat champion, won the 1650-freestyle for the third time at the conference meet. Portello took the win in the 500-freestyle and junior Ava Hamblett won the 200-backstroke.

At the end of the meet though, it came down to Filkin, Cramer, Portello and Cole in the 400-free relay. Huston had done the math and knew that if FIU won the race, Rice wouldn’t win the meet. So, he was cheering for Tulane to win and for Rice to be less than one team away from FIU.

“I put in people I knew were going to step up and really race and lay it on the line,” Huston said. “All we had to do was hope Tulane could do their job, and then I figured we could take care of the rest.”

The pool deck was filled with nerves and excitement when Portello dove in to start the relay. Sophomore Logan Betkey and Coyne had their faces painted a dark blue, with Betkey also sporting a lighter blue wig. Coyne was on her toes the whole time. Hayon was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Cramer, who Hurt said always steps up to the plate in pressure-filled moments, was the bridge between the first 200 yards by the two freshmen and the finish by Filkin. When Filkin dove in, Hurt knew she would finish the relay hard.

“Mimi doesn’t fade on the last 25 [yards], Mimi speeds up,” Hurt said. “She out touches people when she needs to. She always knows how to get the job done. So I think that was the longest 25 [yards] I’ve watched in my life.”

Filkin touched the wall 0.24 seconds ahead of the University of North Texas swimmer. While it might have been two full minutes before Filkin realized that she secured the win for the team, her reaction had been years in the making.

“Once we touched the wall, realized we won, I was like, ‘I told you so,’ just to the world, not to anyone in particular,” Filkin said. “I knew that if we got a dive team and got our stuff together we could win this conference championship.”

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