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Jasmine Nocentini, the 2024 NCAA Champion in the 100 yard breaststroke, is pursuing a career in professional swimming and will return home to train in Italy, she told SwimSwam on Tuesday.
Nocentini, 22, began her college career at Florida International and Northwestern before finishing last season at the University of Virginia, where she exploded to become a key contributor to their 4th-straight NCAA team title. There she won the 100 breaststroke in 56.09, was 3rd in the 50 free in 21.10, and 4th in the 100 free in 47.00.
Nocentini’s Time Progression at Each School:
| At FIU | At Northwestern | At Virginia | |
| 50 free | 22.28 | 21.59 | 21.10 |
| 100 free | 48.93 | 47.76 | 46.75 |
| 100 breast | DNS | 58.31 | 56.09 |
Nocentini’s swim in the 100 breaststroke is the 3rd-best performance of all-time behind only two Lilly King swims.
She had one year of collegiate eligibility remaining (explained here).
Nocentini, who was a member of Italy’s team at the 2023 European Short Course Championships last December, hasn’t competed since the NCAA Championships in March.
She says that after five years in the United States, she took a break to spend some time with her family and is now back in training based out of the University of Iowa. She plans to stay there until November to “get back in shape” while training with George Durin.
Durin is a former swimmer at NCAA Division II school Colorado Mesa University who swam his last collegiate meet in 2022. Like Nocentini, he was a breaststroker, with a best time of 55.95 at the RMAC Championships (at altitude) his senior year where he finished 5th.
He is currently a volunteer assistant at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
After that she will return to Italy to train out of the Federal Center there.
The next step for Nocentini will be turning her short course results into long course performances. She has always been a better short course course swimmer than long course swimmer, but the current gaps are more reflective of her extreme focus on short course swimming while in America. She hasn’t been a best time in the 100 free or 100 breaststroke in long course, for example, since 2018, but based on her short course progressions is almost-assuredly capable of better times.
Best Times in Long Course:
- 50 free – 25.04 (November 2023)
- 100 free – 57.57 (August 2018)
- 100 breast – 1:13.57 (August 2018)
Nocentini did not attend Italy’s Olympic Trials in March.
A deep Italian women’s breaststroking group is showing some signs of aging. In the 2023-2024 season, they had three women ranked in the top 30 globally in the 100 breaststroke, led by #5 Benedetta Pilato. All four were under 1:07. In the last Olympic year in 2021, however, they had three of the top nine globally.
The Italian 400 free relay was 8th in prelims and finals with the same lineup in each round. Their slowest splits were 54.2 (on rolling starts) so that would be a target for Nocentini to qualify for those relays going forward.
The country only entered one woman in the 50 free at the Olympics: 18-year-old Sara Curtis, who was 14th in the semi-finals in 24.77.
Nocentini left Italy well before swimming in the NCAA: her family moved to Panama when she was 12 years old.
