Avery Luedke is first to the wall, splashing past her Duke competition.

She led the pack for the first half of the race and kept her pace through the finish. Luedke boasted a mile time of 16:36.44, a first-place finish for the newcomer. The performance capped an impressive regular season for the true freshman.

Luedke is a backstroke and distance freshman from Chicago, Illinois. Even though the Vols have had a spectacular recruiting year, Luedke has managed to stand out early in her career. And she has had a sparkling beginning to her collegiate campaign.

She has an extensive background, with a consistent drive for challenging events, such as the 500-yard free and the mile. Though her versatility cannot be ignored, the freshman came in with impressive performances in both the 100-yard freestyle and the 200-yard backstroke.

As a distance specialist, Luedke naturally had many programs reaching out to her. Luedke had over 20 programs to choose from, but narrowed her search down to Arizona State, Alabama and Tennessee. As she explored the recruiting process, she felt drawn to Tennessee’s spirited atmosphere.

“I would just say the thing that made me choose Tennessee was the feeling of family here,” Luedke said. “(Tennessee) is so welcoming, no matter your background.”

The coaching staff at Tennessee was thrilled with the new addition, furthering its already stellar lineup for the 2025-26 season. Even though the staff recruits high-end athletes, the freshman classes’ improvement still surprised the coaches.

“I think one of the things that’s really impressed me this year was the development of our freshman class, both men and women,” head coach Matt Kredich said. “They came in after we lost a massive senior class last year. So the change in the team was enormous.”

Kredich has an extensive history of coaching and has made a great impact in Tennessee, especially in women’s swimming. Kredich has won nine coach of the year titles and helped the Lady Vols achieve the SEC title in both 2020 and 2022. He has taken a great interest in this year’s freshman class and their improvement.

“They spent a while trying to absorb the culture, and figure out, orient themselves,” Kredich said. “And second semester, they’ve been really aggressive and assertive, and really starting to create their own identity. So I’ve been really impressed with them.”

Luedke has shown significant improvement since the start of her college career. She’s quickly emerged as a reliable, consistent addition.

And although her club’s coaching focused on many different strokes and distances, the focused training in Tennessee has allowed her to flourish. Tennessee assistant coach Caleb Lawrence captures the intensity of her training.

“She swims for really long, unbroken chunks that get a little bit faster as the workout goes on,” Lawrence said. “Also helps with the rhythm building, but it helps her to set a steady pace, and then find ways to subtly change speeds, exactly like she’s going to do in the mile.”

Lawrence has experience coaching for multiple national-level swimmers, as well as high-level collegiate programs such as Richmond and Notre Dame. He uses his experience and translates it into Luedke’s training, especially with the ever-changing world of college swimming.

“Trying to make sure that she gets training in different strokes and at different speeds throughout the week is really important,” Lawrence said. “In terms of like, just the distance stuff, I would say that there’s really three main workouts that are kind of targeted through the week. So Monday afternoon, which is her first primary workout of the week, for the first half of the year, it’s a lot of aerobic capacity building.”

Although Luedke is accustomed to swimming long and strenuous events, several different aspects come into play while swimming. One of the most important is her mentality.

Luedke has mastered the strategic aspect of the race, particularly in translating her training experience into the actual race.

“The training is just preparation, and you’re practicing your race plan,” Luedke said. “When you dive in, you don’t have to think.”

As of recently, there has been a rise in distance swimming, with legends like Katie Ledecky and Bobby Finke still surpassing the competition and smashing records. Ledecky has broken the 1500-meter freestyle six times since 2013.

The arena is growing more and more each year. That’s why it is important to expand horizons and set new goals. The postseason begins with the SEC Championships Feb. 16 to 21, before the NCAA Championships arise later in March.

“I would say a big goal for me is to be a scorer at NCAAs,” Luedke said. “Just to be able to score points for NCAAs and stay a top-five team.”

Both the NCAAs and conference championships are pinnacles of college swimming. With the end of the dual-meet season, the Vols have faced many of their foes already, sweeping Auburn, Kentucky and Duke throughout the year. But Luedke and the rest of her teammates still have a lot left.

“We’re more on a path towards trying to be the best we could be at SECs,” Kredich said. “And the same thing for NCAAs.”

As the end of the season approaches, swimmers are rushing to collect themselves to prepare for the SEC Championships. With the championships taking place in Knoxville this year, the Vols are especially focused on succeeding.

“I think this team has done a great job at every phase of the season, taking stock of what the next challenge is and meeting it head on,” Kredich said. “It’s like nothing else that we do on our schedule, and we’re gonna need all of our resources for it, so one of the main goals is to rest while we continue to sharpen and prepare.”

There are a lot of stressors that come with being a Division I program, which includes being a student first. Luedke is majoring in civil engineering, learning how to balance being a student and an athlete.

“The first semester was definitely a learning curve,” Luedke said. “Once you find a routine, it gets a lot easier. We have so many resources here.”

Overall, Luedke still has a lot to learn over the course of her collegiate career. She’s managed to shred the course and pass the competition with grace, edge and strength. She already managed to gain a great deal from her collegiate experience.

“Give yourself some grace,” Luedke said.

That grace is extended by the coaching staff, too.

“You do not have to be perfect on any given day. You don’t have to walk into a performance practice or a competition and match what you did the time before,” Lawrence said. “You just have to move through it the same way that you do.”

Luedke will be back in the water on Feb. 17 in Knoxville to compete at her first SEC Championships.