Northeastern’s Women’s Swimming and Diving team just finished up the regular season, and with that, the careers of nearly half of the roster are winding to a close. With Senior Day Jan. 25 and the last regular meets of the season Feb. 7 to 8, the 14 graduating Huskies now look ahead to tournament season — beginning with the CAA Championships at the end of the month — as they conclude their collegiate careers.

“They’ve all given so much to the program, especially the 11 who have been here for three or four years, but obviously the grad students have provided leadership and talents in the one year they’ve been here, so we’re losing a lot — we’re losing half the team,” said head coach Roy Coates, who earned his 200th career win behind the bench this season.

The graduating group includes 11 swimmers — seniors Francesca Arciniegas, Emily Cooley, Kate Cosgrove, Nicole Linell, Devon Muldoon, Daphne Peterson, Hannah Seward, Stella Urness and Angela Woronko and graduate students Emily Gjertsen and Caroline Mahoney; and three divers — junior Jodi Au and seniors Isabelle Chambers and Erin Murphy. 

The graduating class, which includes both steadfast members of the program and talented transfers, encompasses some of the most successful swimmers and divers in Northeastern history. In 2023, the team reached a program-high third-place finish in the CAA Championships and has continued breaking records, including tallying five team wins in its first seven meets this season. 

On Senior Day, in a home meet against conference rival Stony Brook University, family and friends flocked to Barletta Natatorium as the Huskies honored their graduating members with a dominant performance, placing first in every event, including the three-meter dive (Murphy), one-meter dive (Murphy), 400-meter medley relay (Cosgrove, Urness, Seward and Mahoney), 50-meter fly (Seward) and 100-meter Individual Medley (Urness). 

“[Senior Day is] a really special time for [family] to watch the meet and my whole family be recognized because it really is, like for all athletics, it’s the people behind you, and my family has been such an important part in my whole life, but especially my diving life,” Chambers said. “Altogether very emotional, very special day and really a good way to kind of start closing out my career.”

But the pool isn’t the only place where this group shines. 

“We try to focus on three things: … classroom, community service and competition,” Coates said. “We’ve been recognized for many years as an academic All-American team by the College Swim Coaches Association. … They want to be excellent in the pool, but they also want to be excellent in the classroom.”

The team recorded an impressive cumulative 3.62 GPA in the fall 2024 semester, another nod to their academic prowess. 

In between classes and trips to the pools, the swimmers and divers take part in community service projects such as Relay for Life, trips to the food bank and Swim Across America — where they raised a program-record $19,000 this past year.

“Swim Across America [is] a great way to kick off the season and get everyone on the same boat of why we’re here, and why we swim or dive, and how we can be better teammates, and then we’re also swimming for charity,” Chambers said. 

Community service opportunities such as this not only raise money for worthy causes, but also allow for team bonding, which is an important aspect of turning an individual sport into a team effort. 

“I think going into college swimming, I had a very individualistic look on the sport,” said Muldoon, a captain and senior swimmer. “And then coming into Northeastern, the definition of the sport completely changed for me. I think it changed to much more of a collaborative team thing where I was working not only for my goals, but to push other people to achieve their goals, and that was really inspiring to me — being able to see people who I train with, seeing them accomplish their goals and knowing what their goals are and all collectively buying into that team environment is really special and something that I’m really grateful for.”

Northeastern’s swim and dive team is one collective group, but they don’t always compete in the same location or at the same meets. When the Huskies ended their regular season the weekend of Feb. 7 to 8, the two sides of the program were on different sides of the city — the swimmers traveled to Boston University to compete in the Boston Winter Open while the divers hosted the Northeastern Diving Invitational, for only the second time since the event’s creation last season.

“The swimmers were having this Boston Winter Open, and it was a great opportunity for them to go over to BU, but the same opportunity wasn’t being provided for the [divers]” Coates said. “So we created our own meet so that they could have a similar event on the same weekend that the swimmers do, where they can bring in some great competition and really fine tune their skills so they can be ready for championships.”

Despite having separate meets from time to time, the senior group, led by its captains — Chambers, Muldoon and Bendall — has made sure to always support each other. They’ve set up consistent team meetings, weekly lifts and “goal buddies” in order to bring together the swimmers and the divers more closely. 

“One of our goals as captains coming into this was to bond better as swimmers and divers,” Chambers said. “That’s really important — just cheering for each other, knowing what is going on on both sides and staying up to date.”

Whether it’s attending meets, traveling to training trips or simply spending time together, being a part of the Northeastern swim and dive team has created plenty of memories for the 14 departing members. 

When asked about a favorite memory, Muldoon said, “It’s countless.”

Tournament season for Northeastern’s Women’s Swimming and Diving team will commence with the CAA Championships Feb. 26 to March 1.

“February is a tough month, where we kind of put our heads down and we work really hard, right going up into CAA,” Muldoon said. “So I really want to instill just a level of excitement, but also telling the team that we’re ready to do this and we’re ready to accomplish our goals that we’ve set since the beginning of the year and really inspiring everyone to reach that new potential that they all have in them … [and] just trying to inspire others to do that as well because I think that’s what really makes our team special.”