Hill Places Herself in Elite Company
By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
CHARLOTTESVILLE– As NC State’s associate head coach for swimming and diving, Todd DeSorbo did his best to interest Morgan Hill in spending her college years in Raleigh.
“I tried to recruit her. I would not say that I did recruit her,” DeSorbo recalled with a laugh. “She didn’t really give me the time of day when I was at NC State. Which was fine. That’s how recruiting goes. Fortunately, I get to coach her now.”
In August 2017, UVA hired DeSorbo to oversee its swimming and diving programs. The swimmers waiting for him on Grounds included Hill, a graduate of Sherwood High School in Olney, Md., who was heading into her second year at the University.
“When I met him for the first time last summer, a lot of [UVA swimmers], people who had actually considered NC State, knew him personally,” Hill said. “I was with a group of people, and a bunch of them were like, ‘Good to see you. I’m so excited.’ ”
Hill smiled. “And the first thing he said to me was, ‘I know you. You didn’t give me the time of day.’ ”
Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Hill competed in several sports, including lacrosse, before focusing on swimming in high school. She swam for renowned coach Sue Chen on three clubs – first RMSC, then Machine Aquatics and, finally, NCAP. A three-time member of The Washington Post’s All-Metro first team, Hill narrowed her college choices to Virginia, Southern California and Michigan.
She scheduled official visits to each school but was leaning toward USC. On her first visit, to UVA, however, “I just knew right away,” Hill said. “So I canceled my other two and committed.”
It’s easy to understand why top college programs wanted Hill, whose parents are University of Maryland alumni. Early this month, at the prestigious Georgia Fall Invitational in Athens, she set a UVA record in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 47.83 seconds.
Hill had shared the previous record (47.88) with Lauren Perdue, an Olympic gold medalist in 2012.
“I am always pleased to hear when records are broken (even my own), because that means the program is getting faster!” Perdue wrote in an email. “Plus, records are made to be broken.”
To hold a school record “definitely means a lot,” Hill said, “with the history of the program. Looking up and seeing my name among Olympians and people who have done really, really good things for Virginia is really special and cool.”
Next to the pool at the Aquatics and Fitness Center is a wall on the program’s and venue’s records are displayed.
“I remember looking at them my first year and just being like, ‘Oh, my God, those times are so fast. I wonder if anyone’s ever going to break those records,’ ” Hill said.
In the 50 freestyle, her time of 22.05 seconds ranks third all-time at UVA. In the 200 free, her best time (1:44.11) is the seventh-fastest in program history. At last season’s NCAA championships, where the Wahoos finished ninth, Hill earned All-America honors in three relays: the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle. She was an honorable-mention All-American in the 50 and 100 free.
“Morgan never ceases to amaze me in workouts,” DeSorbo said. “She does things in training that I’ve never seen anybody else do in my 15 years of coaching, and I think that she’s got a lot more in the tank. She really just kind of scratching the surface.
“In my mind, she’s capable of making the U.S. Olympic team in 2020. It’s a matter of whether she can wrap her brain around that or not, because I don’t think she ever thought of herself as being that good. So she’s got to figure out if she wants to be that good, and she’s got to start having the confidence and the swagger to get to that level. Because once you have the talent and the ability, then it becomes confidence and swagger. That’s what it’s all about.”
DeSorbo has discussed Hill’s future in the sport with her, she said. “I’m not sure if it’s a matter of confidence. I personally never envisioned my swimming career going beyond college, and I still am not really sure if I even want that.”
Hill, who’s majoring in media studies and American studies, is scheduled to graduate in May 2020, after which she’s interested in attending law school.
The NCAA championships conclude in the middle of March, and pursuing a spot on the Olympic team would be “a pretty big commitment,” Hill said.
“If I’m still ambivalent about it [in 2020], I feel like it’s not something you can take lightly to stay here and be training up to 20 hours a week. A big part of why I like swimming so much is my teammates and being at Virginia, and I think the Olympics as a whole, it’s a very different thing. To be a post-grad swimmer, it’s just a very different lifestyle.”
She loves being part of a team, Hill said. “I honestly think that’s what’s kept me in the sport as long as I’ve been in it. There was a point in my junior year [of high school], right after my coach switched to NCAP, that I was hating swimming. I honestly quit for a couple weeks. I told my coach I needed a break.”
The camaraderie she’s found at UVA did not exist to nearly the same degree in club swimming, Hill said. “Thankfully my coach was like, ‘I’m not letting you quit.’ So I came back, and I’m grateful that I did. But if I had ended up at a school besides Virginia, I’m not sure if I would still be swimming. The sport in and of itself is hard.”
When DeSorbo’s predecessor as the Cavaliers’ head coach, Augie Busch, left in the summer of 2017, Hill was stunned.
As a rising sophomore, “I felt like I was just figuring out life here,” she recalled. “But the transition couldn’t have gone any better, I think. It was pretty seamless. We did really well last year” – UVA won the ACC women’s title for the 10thtime in 11 seasons – “and I think a big part of that was our team culture, which was already set and in place. That was already good. The coaches came in and we were able to hit the ground running.”
The Georgia Fall Invitational brought together five of the nation’s premier programs: California, Michigan, Georgia, UVA and UCLA. In the race in which Hill set a school record, the 100 free, she placed fourth.
“It’s a really small meet,” DeSorbo said, “but it is really fast. It’s probably the fastest midseason invitational in the country each year, especially on the women’s side.
“It sets us up well for NCAAs, because it’s the toughest competition we’ll see, even tougher than our conference championship meet. Because if Morgan goes the same [time] in the 100 free at our conference championship, she’s going to finish higher than she did at that meet.”
UVA swimmers return to competition on Jan. 11 in a dual meet against Tennessee at the AFC. The ACC women’s championships start on Feb. 20 in Greensboro, N.C., and the NCAAs on March 20 in Austin, Texas.
“Based on what Morgan did [in Georgia], there’s no reason she shouldn’t be able to be top eight and All-American in a couple of individual events at NCAAs this year,” DeSorbo said.
Hill, who lives with fellow swimmers Madeleine Vonderhaar and Mary Claire Tansill and diver Sydney Dusel, is a four-time ACC champion in relays. She said she tries “not to think too much about individual places or times, because I feel like it can drive you crazy. But just improving every year is one of my main goals.”