When Anna Moesch matriculated at the University of Virginia in 2024, she had long-term goals to swim personal bests and make the Olympic team in four years.
Todd DeSorbo, her new coach in Charlottesville, had something more in mind.
“He told me my first year that he thought I could break the American record in the long course 100m free,” Moesch said.
Moesch, who had just tied for eighth in the 100m free at the 2024 Olympic Trials, wasn’t quite that confident.
“I kind of was like, yeah, OK, sure,” she said.
Within two years, Moesch proved DeSorbo prophetic.
She swam 51.94 seconds in the 100m free at the AP Race London International on May 25, breaking the American record of 52.04 set by Simone Manuel at the 2019 World Championships.
Moesch, whose previous personal best was 53.23 seconds, bypassed 52 seconds entirely. She began the year as the 18th-fastest American in history in the event, according to World Aquatics.
Now Moesch is a headliner at the Toyota USA Swimming National Championships, which run from Tuesday through Saturday in Irvine, California, with nightly finals at 9 ET on Peacock and NBCSN.
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Moesch is well aware of the world record — Dutchwoman Marrit Steenbergen reset it a month ago, clocking 51.68 at the Sette Colli meet in Rome.
That’s a not-too-distant 26 hundredths faster than Moesch’s American record.
“I don’t have an expectation that (Moesch) is going to break the world record; I’m not going to put that pressure on her,” DeSorbo said. “But I certainly believe that it’s in the back of her mind and something that she is definitely going to go for.”
When Moesch started swimming at age 7 in New Jersey, she chased somebody else: Marlise, her older sister by six years who later swam for Yale.
Moesch goofed off as a middle schooler. She threw quarters into the pool and picked them up from the bottom while swimming laps.
“My first club coach ever kind of pulled me aside one day,” Moesch said. “He told me that if he had to list the three most talented people (on the team) that I would be one of those, but if you had to list the three hardest working, then I wouldn’t be anywhere near that list.”
That lit a fire.
Moesch qualified to swim in the Tokyo Olympic Trials in 2021 at age 15, and advanced from the first wave to the second wave by one hundredth of a second. She ultimately finished 25th in the 50m free.
“That was kind of my first big experience with something like that,” Moesch said, “and it kind of opened my eyes to a whole new world of swimming.”
Then came the most difficult period of Moesch’s young career.
In late 2022 — soon after committing to Virginia — she underwent surgery to repair a torn medial patellofemoral ligament in her left knee, which had been damaged years earlier.
“I think I fell off a bike, and so it never really recovered from that,” she said. “So they kind of described it as an injury waiting to happen.”
When she came back in early 2023, Moesch leaned on the shoulder of Mary Korey, her coach with the Greater Somerset County YMCA Storm, just to get up on the starting blocks.
She couldn’t push off walls. The first day she swam a 50-meter freestyle for time, Korey remembers Moesch remarking that it was slower than when she was in elementary school.
“That was a real dark time in her life because she started to doubt if she was going to come back,” Korey said. “It’s kind of like any athlete that’s at a high level when they have an injury. It’s scary.”
Moesch wanted to get back to the Olympic Trials in 2024, which would be weeks after her high school graduation. She did.
She tied for eighth in the 100m free semifinals, forcing her into arguably the most pressure-packed situation possible at an Olympic Trials: a head-to-head swim-off for a spot in the final.
What’s more, it came against Erika Connolly, a woman seven years older who already owned two Olympic medals.
Connolly won the duel by 36 hundredths. Moesch could hold her head high, having recorded the two fastest 100m frees of her life to that point in the semis and the swim-off.
“She was nervous as hell,” Korey said. “The swim showed it, but I couldn’t be more proud of her. She did it on one of the biggest stages. So she accomplished it, got her demons pushed aside. But it was nerve-racking. She’s a high school kid having to do a swim-off against an Olympian.”
The next night, Moesch watched the 100m free final from the seats inside Lucas Oil Stadium.
“I thought about how I wanted to be in it next time,” she said.
She also marveled that the finalists included the decorated women she would soon be sharing lanes with at Virginia — Kate Douglass and Gretchen Walsh.
Over the last two years, Moesch improved her turns and underwaters just by watching others in her talented training group.
“They make me push so much harder, harder than I ever thought I could,” she said.
Moesch added motivation this past year. Though she made the 2025 World Championships team as a relay swimmer, she was beaten out for a spot on the 2026 national team by one place.
In a preseason goal-setting session with DeSorbo, she told her coach that she wasn’t going to miss the national team again. DeSorbo told Moesch that she’d have to work harder than ever before.
“He definitely did not lie,” Moesch says now. “The next few months, he held me to such a standard.”
Moesch responded by winning her first individual NCAA title in the 200-yard freestyle in March.
Two months later in London, she touched the wall in 51.94 and covered her mouth in astonishment. She wasn’t sure it was an American record until a pool-deck interviewer told her.
Her parents and her swimming inspiration, sister Marlise, were in the crowd.
“My husband and daughter had tears in their eyes, and I was just in shock,” mom Cynthia said.
Moesch prepared for this week’s U.S. Championships as if it’s a World Championships.
There are no World Championships this year. The team for this year’s biggest international meet, the Pan Pacific Championships, was determined last summer, and Moesch didn’t make it.
So nationals is the meet she trained to peak for.
She recently spent two and a half weeks in Colorado Springs, by far her longest stint of altitude training.
Moesch is not lacking confidence. She thinks a world record in the 100m free is possible.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was chasing that record,” she said.
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