Two Illinois sophomores lead the way as the 100-yard breaststroke times rewrite the school’s history books.
Across the Big Ten, the landscape in women’s breaststroke for the 100 varies from season to season. Traditional powers like Indiana and Minnesota are not dominating the conference top 10 this year; Indiana only has one entry in the top 10 for the 200 breaststroke, while Michigan (Letitia Sim) and Wisconsin (three of the top five in the 200 breast) are rising in prominence.
Top 10, Women’s 100 SCY Breaststroke, Big Ten, 2025-2026 Season
- Maria Ramos Najji, Ohio State – 58.00
- Letitia Sim, Michigan – 58.12
- Brooke Corrigan, Wisconsin – 59.80
- Sarah Bennetts, UCLA – 59.97
- Bella Brito, USC – 1:00.16
- Bridget McGann, Wisconsin – 1:00.23
- Paige Delma, Ohio State – 1:00.28
- Cecilia Howard, Michigan – 1:00.47
- (TIE) a. Ashley McMillan, USC – 1:00.48 b. Hazal Ozkan, Wisconsin – 1:00.48
But the most striking development in the conference rankings comes from the University of Illinois, a program that is actively reshaping its record book and steadily climbing the Big Ten ladder.
Illinois’ internal record book was shared by head coach Jeana Kempe (in a SwimSwam post), illustrating a dramatic turnover: over the past season and a half, two Illini stars—Kayla Duran and Chloe Diner—have virtually rewritten the school’s all-time top 10 in the 100 breaststroke.
Not merely improving on old marks, they effectively wiped out nearly all previous entries. Only one performance in the top 10 remained from before their impact—Gabriele Seriniute’s 2019 mark at position 10.
Then on Saturday, Diner swam 1:01.66 and Duran 1:01.83 during a tri-meet against Purdue and Wisconsin, sealing a complete top-10 lock for Illinois in the event.
“I think we are limitless in our potential right now,” Kempe said of her team’s trajectory. “We challenge our team to be ‘The Best Illinois Team Ever’ day in and day out. Every year we are rewriting the history books and embracing the next challenge. It’s exciting to see how many swimmers in this team hold school records or rank among top-ten performances in history. Every athlete feels a responsibility to push the program higher, and that pushes us daily. Our athletic director is among the nation’s best, fully supporting a department that stays competitive at the highest level year after year. It feels like a launching point for Illinois swimming.”
Remarkably, both Duran and Diner are sophomores, each arriving with lifetime-best times of 1:01.51—faster than Seriniute’s former school record—suggesting strong potential for continued improvement and a positive sign about the program’s recruiting and development.
“Our staff and department stay true to who we are,” Kempe noted about the recruiting culture. “We share our vision for Illinois from the very first practice we coached 3.5 years ago. The team is our family, and everyone—athletes and parents—plays a role in our success. We’ve worked with leadership coaches to refine our culture, and last summer we created the ‘Illini Leadership Academy,’ a four-session program that defined leadership, identified essential qualities for our next level, and clarified our core values as individuals and as a team. It fostered an open space for collective growth.”
Kempe’s background both as a former Illinois state champion in the 100 breaststroke (2001–2002) and as a former U.S. Junior National Team member, plus her coaching stints at Auburn, LSU, and Northern Arizona, provides a strong foundation for this rebuild.
The program’s strategy emphasizes relationship-building in recruitment and a transparent, authentic leadership culture. Kempe stresses the importance of recruiting from within the region—Illinois and the Chicagoland area produce top swimmers like Duran and Diner—and building a program that can produce sustained success beyond a single season.
In a program with a history of enduring 10th-place finishes at Big Tens, these signs—record-breaking performances, a clear development pipeline, and a cohesive leadership culture—point toward a potential renaissance under Kempe. Last year, Sara Jass set a school record in the 400 IM, breaking a 16-year-old mark, further signaling a shift in Illinois swimming’s trajectory.
About Braden Keith
Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder of SwimSwam. He brings years of experience building coverage around swimming and frequently contributes deeper profiles and program-level analyses like this. For more on Illinois, Duran, and Diner, see SwimSwam’s coverage and Kempe’s interviews.
