Quick Take
Duke’s swimming and diving program is competing at the 2026 ACC Championships in Atlanta through February 21, with the women’s team ranked No. 20 nationally entering the meet. Kaelyn Gridley is defending her 2025 100 breaststroke title, Ali Pfaff is gunning for a program record in the backstroke events, and a deep diving corps has eight athletes qualified for NCAA Zones.
How Did Duke Swimming and Diving Perform During the 2025-26 Regular Season?
The Blue Devils came into the 2026 ACC Championships with something to build on. The women’s team posted a 6-2 record in dual meet action, cracked the CSCAA Top 25 at No. 20, and produced some of the most consistent individual performances in program history. The men finished 3-5, but that record understates the improvement head coach Brian Barnes has coaxed out of a roster that’s been steadily climbing since he took over.
Senior Kaelyn Gridley led all Blue Devil swimmers with 868.50 season points and 12 first-place finishes. Junior Ali Pfaff was right behind her at 854.40 points with 11 wins. Senior Tatum Wall rounded out the women’s top three with 818.20 points and seven victories. On the men’s side, junior Kalen Anbar paced the group with 802.45 points, while freshmen Anderson Kopp and Charlie Kulp each checked in at 790.95, signaling that the men’s program has some genuine young talent starting to hit.
One of the season’s cleaner storylines came at the Wolfpack Elite Invitational in December, where Pfaff won the women’s 200-yard freestyle with a then-career-best 1:44.24, moving her to No. 2 all-time in Duke history in the event. She also set a program record in the 100-yard backstroke at 51.06, besting a mark that had stood for four years. Duke’s women per GoDuke.com also registered 13 all-time top-10 performances from their men’s group at the same invite, evidence that both sides of the roster were trending in the right direction heading into February.
What Happened for Duke at Last Year’s ACC Championships?
The 2025 ACC Championships in Greensboro delivered Duke’s signature moment of the season. Gridley, then a junior, became the first Blue Devil to win an individual ACC swimming title since Leah Goldman in the 2017-18 season when she touched first in the women’s 100 breaststroke in 58.23 seconds, edging Virginia’s Emma Weber by just 0.04 seconds in one of the meet’s tightest races.
That win was the result of a lot of built-up hunger. Gridley had finished third in the same event at the 2024 ACCs, then used the off-season to compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials, where she posted fifth-place finishes in both the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke against a field that included world-record holders and Olympians. She came back to Durham with a sharper gear and showed it in Greensboro, as the Duke Chronicle reported at the time.
Pfaff made noise of her own in 2025, breaking her school record in the 100 backstroke prelims at 51.11 and then placing seventh in the A-final against a heat that included NCAA record-holder Gretchen Walsh. The women’s 200 freestyle relay team of Wall, KyAnh Truong, Pfaff and Clare Logan also set a school record and earned an NCAA cut. The women finished 11th overall and the men 12th, both in line with where they entered, but with significantly more momentum than the scoreboard suggested.
Who Is Kaelyn Gridley and Why Does She Matter at ACCs This Year?
Kaelyn Gridley is the most decorated active swimmer in Duke’s program, and she enters the 2026 ACC Championships with both a target on her back and plenty of reason for optimism. The senior from Wilmette, Illinois is a two-time First Team All-American whose trajectory has been almost uninterrupted improvement since arriving in Durham as one of the fastest high school breaststrokers in the country.
Defending a conference title is always harder than winning one the first time, and Gridley’s path this week is legitimately difficult. The 100 breast field has gotten significantly faster: five swimmers entered the meet already under the 58.23 she swam to win last year. She’s seeded seventh in the A-final at 58.46, with Stanford’s Lucy Bell (57.60) and Louisville’s Anastasia Gorbenko (57.67) well ahead on paper. But Gridley qualified for this morning’s final by tying her season-best to the hundredth, per SwimSwam, which suggests she’s saving something for tonight.
Her stronger title shot might actually come in the 200 breaststroke, where she enters as the clear second seed behind only Bell. She’s also a key relay contributor. Whatever happens in the individual finals, this is Gridley’s last conference meet as a Blue Devil, and she’s been in big moments before. She finished fourth at NCAAs last spring in the 200 breast with a school-record 2:04.94. She competes in elite-level finals the way she trains: deliberately and without panic.
Can Ali Pfaff Win Her First ACC Title in the Backstroke?
If there’s one Duke swimmer with a realistic shot at climbing the podium for the first time this week, it’s Ali Pfaff. The junior from Lexington, Virginia owns both Duke backstroke records, and she’s been on an upward arc all season.
Pfaff entered the 2026 ACC Championships ranked ninth in the conference in the 100 back at 51.06, which was already a program record. Then in Friday morning’s prelims, she dropped another hundredth to go 51.00, qualifying second overall for tonight’s A-final behind only Virginia’s Claire Curzan, who swam a staggering 48.83 to become the third-fastest performer in the history of the event. Curzan is in a different orbit this week, but the spots behind her are absolutely attainable. Pfaff, per her GoDuke profile, also earned All-American honors at last year’s NCAAs after dropping time in the backstroke events at the conference meet. She’s done it before under pressure.
She’s also in the mix in the 200 backstroke, where she came into the meet ranked eighth in the ACC with a time of 1:51.99. With two events still to go tonight and the 200 back on Saturday’s schedule, Pfaff has multiple chances to put her name on the All-ACC board.
Which Duke Men Are Making an Impact This Week?
The men’s team has had a tougher road at the 2026 ACCs, sitting 12th in the team standings after day five with 68 points, largely because the conference expanded with Cal and Stanford this year and brought a wave of new talent with it. But a few Blue Devils have turned in performances worth noting.
Junior Kalen Anbar has been the steadiest contributor on the men’s side all season. He posted 12 podium finishes during the regular year and owns two event wins, specializing in breaststroke and IM. The 100 breaststroke field at ACCs is stacked, led by Cal sophomore Yamato Okadome at 50.78, but Anbar has a track record of competing to his ceiling when it counts.
Freshmen Anderson Kopp and Charlie Kulp have been genuine bright spots for the men this year. Kopp earned his first collegiate win during the season and ended with 10 podium finishes, while Kulp led the men’s team with three wins and nine podiums. For both, this ACC meet is their first taste of conference championship swimming, and GoDuke noted that the men’s group combined for 13 all-time top-10 Duke performances at the Wolfpack Invite, a sign of what’s possible when the whole group peaks at once.
How Has the Duke Diving Program Performed at the 2026 ACC Championships?
Duke enters the postseason with one of the deeper diving corps in the program’s recent history. Eight Blue Devil divers qualified for NCAA Diving Zones (Zone B) heading into Atlanta, four women and four men, which is a strong number for a program that has been steadily investing in that side of the roster.
Sophomore Keira Lu has been the standout of the group. She was named ACC Women’s Diver of the Week five times during the regular season, posted 12 first-place finishes, and currently ranks No. 4 all-time in Duke history in the 3-meter dive (362.55) and No. 5 in the 1-meter (323.73). She’s not just accumulating wins against overmatched competition: these are legitimate marks in the program’s record books.
On the men’s side, junior Charles Berman, senior Evan Brown, sophomore Tynan O’Donoghue and senior Yannis Schattman all came in with NCAA Zone qualifications. O’Donoghue earned a 16th-place finish in the 3-meter at last year’s ACCs as a freshman, showing he can compete in a major conference final. The diving program is one of the genuine areas of depth for Duke right now, and all eight qualifiers have a path to scoring points this week and to the NCAA Zones meet in March.
What Does Duke Need to Close Out a Strong ACC Championships?
With Saturday’s finals still to come, including the 1650 free, 200 back, 100 free, 200 breast and 400 free relay, Duke has real opportunities to move up the team leaderboard. The women are at 215.5 points through five days of competition, sitting 11th, which lines up with where the program has been in recent years. But both Pfaff’s 100 back A-final tonight and Gridley’s 200 breast on the final day represent legitimate chances to add All-ACC hardware and NCAA cut times.
Tatum Wall, a senior sprint freestyler who powered Duke’s upset of UNC earlier this season, lowered her lifetime best to 21.47 in the 50 free finals, finishing fifth and showing the kind of end-of-season form that matters heading into March. Wall has been one of the program’s most consistent contributors for three years running, and getting a personal best in the first individual event of the meet sets a good tone for the week’s final session.
The Blue Devils won’t be hoisting a team trophy this week, but that’s not really the story. With Gridley and Pfaff both competing in A-finals and a diving corps fully qualified for the next round, Duke is finishing the regular-season chapter of 2026 with a roster that looks pointed toward something bigger at NCAAs in March.
