Stanford swimmers Torri Huske and Claire Curzan will be sitting out of the 2023-24 NCAA season and taking an Olympic redshirt year in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games, Stanford head coach Greg Meehan confirmed to SwimSwam on Saturday. Both swimmers were 2020(1) Tokyo Olympians two years ago, and will be vying for their second-straight Olympic team in the summer of 2024.
“This decision came from a lot of conversations weighing out the pros and cons, but ultimately we felt like this will put them into the best position headed into Olympic trials,” Meehan said. “We have done this before and understand how much it will impact our NCAA performance next year. At the same time, they know how much their teammates support this decision as well as Stanford’s long history of supporting student-athletes in all sports to pursue the Olympic movement.”
Both Huske and Curzan will enroll at Stanford for the fall quarter of the 2023-24 school year, before taking academic leaves of absence in the winter and spring while remaining on campus to train. Huske will have two years of NCAA eligibility left, while Curzan will have three.
Other Stanford athletes that have recently taken Olympic redshirts during their NCAA career include Simone Manuel in 2016 and Taylor Ruck in 2020.
Huske and Curzan were Stanford’s top scorers at the 2023 NCAA Championships, combining for a total of 101 individual points. With their redshirts and the departure of fifth-year seniors Ruck and Morgan Tankersley, the Cardinal will be losing 123 out of their 183 individual points from NCAAs. In addition, the loss of Huske, Curzan, and Ruck will be a major blow to Stanford relays, as they made up 3/4th of the team’s 400 medley relay, 200 free relay, and 400 free relay that finished 4th, 2nd, and 2nd respectively at NCAAs. Curzan was also on Stanford’s 200 medley relay that finished 9th, while Huske and Ruck were on the 800 free relay that finished 2nd.
At 2023 NCAAs, Stanford finished third overall with 333 points. However, if the individual contributions of Huske, Curzan, and Ruck were taken out, the Cardinal would only have 210 points and finish 7th—and that doesn’t even account for the aforementioned three swimmers’ impact on relays. In other words, even with top breaststrokers Lucy Thomas and Caroline Bricker coming in next season, Stanford is expected to see a major drop in the team rankings.
In addition to being the best two swimmers on Stanford, Huske and Curzan are also two of the best swimmers in the NCAA, and their absence will be felt next season. In the 200 IM, Alex Walsh will become the heavy favorite to win—Huske beat her by 0.01 this year, and without her or Kate Douglass, Walsh will be over two seconds clear of the rest of the NCAA field. The top four finishers of Douglass, Maggie MacNeil, Huske, and Curzan in the 100 fly will all not be present, causing the event to become wide open. Curzan won the 200 back by over a second this year, and without her, the doors have opened for names like Phoebe Bacon and Isabelle Stadden to win an NCAA title.
All of this is assuming that no other swimmers will be taking Olympic redshirts, and given that names like Virginia’s Matt King have already considered it, that assumption probably won’t be true.
In 2021, both Huske and Curzan qualified for the 100 fly. Huske finished 4th and missed a gold medal by 0.14 seconds, while Curzan placed 10th. In addition, both swimmers earned a silver medal for swimming the fly leg of the 4×100 medley relay for Team USA, with Huske swimming the finals leg and Curzan swimming the free leg.
Since the Olympics, Huske and Curzan have taken on a much bigger role for team USA. At the 2022 World Championships, they both swam on the women’s and mixed 4×100 free and medley relays, in addition to their four individual events apiece. Huske amassed a total of three gold and three bronze medals (including an individual world title in the 100 fly), while Curzan earned two golds and three bronzes.
