Maggie Purcell Helps Lead Richmond To Its 16th Atlantic 10 Conference Championship

In 2017, during her senior year at Southampton High School, Maggie Purcell said that the University of Richmond’s continued success in the Atlantic 10 Conference played a big part in what fueled her decision to swim there.

Over three years later, Purcell has become a large part of Richmond’s continued success, leading the Spiders to one of their best finishes yet at the most recent Atlantic 10 Conference Championships, which were held April 14-17 at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.

Purcell won gold medals in both the 200-yard individual medley (2:00.17) and 200-yard breaststroke (2:13.70), bronze in the 400-yard individual medley (4:18.14), and was part of three medal-winning relay teams, helping lead Richmond to its 16th A10 Championship, scoring 687.5 points, the most points by a winning team in the conference championship since the Spiders scored 737 in 2013.

Purcell also won gold in the 400-yard freestyle relay, along with Lauren Medlin, Katelyn Pennell and Claire O’Shaughnessy, which broke a school record by finishing in 3:21.03. She also won silver in the 400-yard medley relay (3:40.96) with Pennell, O’Shaughnessy and Sara Greene, and another silver in the 800-yard freestyle relay (7:19.84) with Medlin, Alexa Connors and Megan Carson.

Richmond won conference championships from 2002 to 2009, did not win in 2010, but then rattled off another seven in a row before going on a bit of a dry spell the past three seasons. While some may have thought the pressure was on the Spiders to finally break through and win another conference championship, Purcell said it was the exact opposite.

“I think that our team went into the meet and just wanted to have a ton of fun,” Purcell said. “We weren’t focused too much on placement. We just said we’ll have a ton of fun and that was our focus. We didn’t really have any pressure on us because we haven’t won in a year, so it ended up working out for everyone. Everyone that swam scored a point, which is a crazy accomplishment for us.

“I really did surprise myself,” she added. “I did swim in seven different events, three individual and four relays, so it was a lot of swimming. But we were just so grateful to be able to compete. A lot of other college sports had their sports canceled, so to be able to compete and turn out the way that it did, I’m just really happy with how I did and how the team did overall.”

Close to three-quarters of the team swam best times, said Richmond head coach Matt Barany, who was named A10’s Coach of the Year for the ninth time in his career. And what was amazing about it, he added, is that it all happened in a season in which the pandemic really affected almost everything the team does.

“We didn’t really have a regular season,” he said. “We usually have a winter season that coincides with basketball. They made an announcement in the fall that we would move our season from February to April. We trained in the fall, came back and had a second-semester season. We had a couple of dual meets along the way, but we certainly didn’t have our traditional regular season schedule, so we didn’t really know how we were going to perform. On paper, we knew our roster was strong, but it hadn’t really been tested yet, and so we didn’t know how the group would perform.”

Barany, who has some ties to the East End — his brother owns a house in Montauk, where they like to surf a lot — praised his team for staying safe and following all protocols throughout the season.

“Some other teams took a hit with COVID. We did not,” he said. “We didn’t have a single positive test or single stoppage, like some of the more reckless teams did. They took it to another level.

“People ask me when am I going to jump ship here to coach like a coed team or something else, and I’m like, ‘I like coaching smart women,’” Barany continued. “They all understood the sacrifices they needed to have a season and to be as successful as they were. I don’t have to discipline them, they just do it.”

Barany and Purcell were featured together in last month’s issue of Swimming World Magazine, specifically about how they train. Barany said Purcell is so versatile and can compete in so many different events that it can be difficult to train her, but it’s also a huge asset to the program.

“Every year has been different for her, which is challenging for me because we have to essentially evolve the way we train,” he said. “I think Maggie fancied herself as a breaststroker when she came in, but then she won the 200 IM. This year, she had some of our fastest splits in the medley relay, where she did a freestyle not a breaststroke.

“Maggie is capable of going fast in four strokes. That versatility is rare on any level and is a huge asset for us,” Barany added. “She might do a breaststroke in one relay, then she might be the anchor leg of a freestyle relay. At the end of the day, when you work as hard as Maggie works, you’re going to be fast. I think that her versatility is a direct correlation to her work ethic in practice.”

Purcell will join a handful of Richmond swimmers who will be competing at the Olympic trials in a few weeks. That brings a whole different set of circumstances, such as swimming in a long course pool as opposed to a short course pool, but Purcell said she’s ready for that challenge and that she’s glad she chose the University of Richmond.

“I 100-percent made the right decision in going to Richmond,” she said. “I had a few schools I was looking at, and at the time I really wanted to be on a boys and girls team, but I’m so glad I chose Richmond, just because of the team environment. The coaches are so amazing, the professors are so involved in our lives. I’m totally glad I came to Richmond, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

“And this year has been so different, which is why this championship means so much,” Purcell added. “We went through a season without one positive test, which means the girls put swimming before a lot of other things, and it shows how much girls put the team ahead of themselves.”