Hours before she stepped onto the platform on the second day of the 2019 NCAA Swimming and Diving championships, Maddy Banic sat by the warm-up pool playing back every second of the day before in her head. She had failed to qualify for the finals of the 50-yard freestyle, her best individual event. Now she was again out at the preliminary stage, this time in the 100-yard butterfly.
“We weren’t having a great meet and, as our captain, she carried the disappointment,” says Matt Kredich, head coach of Tennessee swimming and diving.