Senior breaststroke/individual medley specialist Matt Fallon races for first place in the 200-yard breaststroke final.
Credit: Kenny ChenPROVIDENCE, R.I. The lights flickered on and off, and the crowd roared as the athletes lined up behind the diving blocks for the highest-profile race of the week — the 200-yard breaststroke. And in the center of it all was senior breaststroke/individual medley specialist Matt Fallon.
And Fallon lived up to the hype in record-breaking fashion.
At the 2025 Ivy League Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships held at Brown from Feb. 26-March 1, Penn men’s swimming and diving finished in seventh place as a team, but there were several standout individual performances for the Quakers to be proud of, including from the team’s resident Olympian Fallon.
“I was definitely feeling pretty good and expecting to put up a pretty good time, but I’m really happy with how I felt,” Fallon said. “I’m impressed I was able to take [the race] out that quickly and still bring it home.”
On the final day of the meet came Fallon’s magnum opus — the 200 breaststroke. The race was all about Fallon and Brown breaststroke/individual medley specialist Jack Kelly. Both competed in the A final of this event at the Ivy championships and NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships last year. At the latter meet, Fallon took the runner-up title and Kelly rounded out the field in eighth.
Off the blocks, Fallon and Kelly had identical reaction times, and Kelly went out hard during the first quarter of the race. At the first 50 yards, Fallon touched the wall in second, 0.53 seconds behind Kelly. Regarding their strategies for the race, Fallon is historically known for his strong second half of the race, while Kelly is known for his fast front-half sprint speed.
During the second 50 yards, Fallon quickly made up some ground, with Kelly now trailing by 0.11 seconds at the wall. Fallon’s first 100-yard split of 52.00 seconds is notably the fastest he’s ever taken out in this race.
Kelly made some moves during the third 50 yards, putting the two dead even at the 125-yard mark. During the final 50 yards, Fallon pulled away and touched the final wall with a time of 1:48.85, smashing his previous Ivy championship record by nearly a second and achieving his third Ivy title in this event.
The time puts Fallon as the fastest swimmer in the NCAA in the 200 breaststroke this year, which is especially important as Fallon is eyeing that elusive NCAA title that he has been runner-up and second runner-up to in previous years.
Notably, Kelly’s silver-medal winning time of 1:49.80 moves him to the spot of third-fastest swimmer in the 200 breaststroke this year. After years of racing and pushing each other, Fallon and Kelly have become close.
“It’s been a pleasure racing with him over these past four years. It’s gonna be a pleasure racing with him at NCAAs,” Fallon said, “He’s been a motivator for me. But also, everybody here has been great friends. It’s just a very big community, and I’m happy to have it.”
The 100 breaststroke final had a similar story with a different victor. Kelly and Fallon were also the stars of the show, with the duo trading the Ivy championship records all day. In morning prelims, Fallon won the second heat with a new meet record of 51.46. Then, in the final morning heat, Kelly took back his record with a time of 51.25.
In the evening A final, Kelly led the entire race and crushed conference and Ivy meet records in an NCAA A-cut time of 50.60. In his weaker breaststroke event, Fallon gave a great chase, moving from sixth to finishing second at the final wall — just ahead of teammate freshman breaststroke specialist Watson Nguyen.
Nguyen and sophomore individual medley specialist Peter Whittington, while just underclassmen, proved Penn’s breaststroke dominance outside of Fallon this weekend. Whittington and Nguyen finished in fourth and fifth respectively in the 200 breaststroke, and Nguyen finished third in the 100 breaststroke. Last year, Penn also had three A finalists in the 200 breaststroke — Fallon, Whittington, and now-graduated Jason Schreiber.
Whittington specifically shined in his own right. In the 400 individual medley, the sophomore dropped five seconds from his personal best to take home a silver medal, nearly chasing down first-place finisher Brown backstroke/breaststroke/individual medley specialist Marton Nagy in the last 50 yards of the race.
The breaststroke group wasn’t the only one to have all the fun. Junior backstroke specialist James Curreri swam a personal best 500 freestyle to earn third and a NCAA B cut. The Kinnelon, N.J. native took home third in this event at last year’s championships as well. In addition, senior backstroke/individual medley specialist Daniel Gallagher had a strong showing at his final Ivy championships, finishing sixth in the 200 backstroke — improving his seventh-place finish from the 2024 Ivy championships.
These victories are hard-earned, as the Quakers have been persevering through the loss of Sheerr Pool this season due to construction. The Quakers have been bouncing between the West Philadelphia YMCA and Drexel pools for practice time, and the team notably honored one of its practice locations by all wearing T-shirts adorned with the YMCA logo.
“It definitely affected us as a team as a whole a lot because you’re swimming in a really bad pool that has so many waves. It’s hard to train,” Nguyen said. “It also takes so much time out of our schedule [to travel to either pool] too. … We were able to manage it really well.”
Beyond Penn, the times at the championship as a whole were fast. 10 Ivy championship records fell, and eleven NCAA A cuts were achieved — speaking to the strength of Ivy League swimming and diving.
“It’s great to see fast swimming all around, and it’s definitely been a motivator for me,” Fallon said. “I think it’s time — very, very soon, people are gonna start taking the Ivy League a lot more seriously.”
Looking ahead, Fallon will be chasing a championship title at the NCAA D-I Swimming and Diving Championships in March — possibly with some company — in his final meet representing the Red and Blue.
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