It All Started Here: Torri Huske

Just three years removed from her high school graduation, Torri Huske is an ultra-rare, if not unprecedented selection for High School Today’s “It All Started Here” column, as there’s a very valid argument the swimming phenom is still just “starting” out. In fairness, however, with a competitive resume highlighted by six Olympic medals – including three Golds – eight world championships and two world records, there aren’t many 21-year-olds in sports history who have started as fast as Huske has.

Her meteoric rise to international stardom began at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, where she won a total of 15 Virginia High School League (VHSL) state championships (eight individual, seven relays) and capped her career with a pair of national high school records.

An unstoppable force in the 50-meter freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly, Huske claimed state titles in both events as a freshman, sophomore and junior, but saved her most memorable prep performance for last. At the 2021 VHSL Class 6 state meet, Huske established a new national high school record in the 200- yard individual medley, clocking a time of 1-minute, 53.73-seconds that was one-tenth of a second faster than the previous best, which had stood since 2009. Just 27 minutes later, she broke the national benchmark in the 100-yard butterfly while becoming the first female high school student-athlete to break the 50-second barrier (49.95) during competition. In the process, Huske led Yorktown to its third team state title in program history, avenging runner-up team finishes in 2018 and 2020.

The stellar senior season earned Huske USA Today’s Girls High School Swim and Dive Athlete of the Year award and her second Swimming World High School Swimmer of the Year honor, as well as National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association All-America status. She also wrapped her career as a four-time USA Swimming Scholastic All-American and a six-time Virginia state-record holder, adding to the accolades that made her the youngest inductee in the history of the Yorktown High School Hall of Fame in 2022.

Huske’s prep career also coincided with her debut on the world swimming stage, the 2019 World Junior Championships, which saw her take home a total of five gold medals in the 50-meter and 100-meter butterfly and the 4x100-meter freestyle, 4x100-meter medley and 4x100-meter mixed medley relays.

She would also participate in the 2020 United States Olympic Trials the following year, where her American-record time of 55.66 seconds in the butterfly qualified her for the 2020 USA Olympic Team. Huske would go on to finish fourth in the 100-meter butterfly at her first Olympic Games, but did bring home a Silver Medal as a member of the 4x100-meter medley relay team, which finished in 3:51.73.

After her graduation from Yorktown, Huske chose to continue her interscholastic career at Stanford University, where, as a freshman, she earned seven individual conference titles spanning all four days of the Pac-12 Conference Championships en route to “Swimmer of the Meet” honors. Just before that freshman campaign began, Huske also won gold medals as part of Team USA’s 4x50-meter freestyle and 4x100-meter freestyle relay squads at the 2021 World Short Course Championships.

Thanks to her stellar performance at the Pac-12 meet, Huske competed in several events at the 2022 NCAA Championships, racing as part of the Cardinal’s national-champion 4x200-yard freestyle relay team, while clinching national runner-up honors in the 100-yard butterfly and the 200-yard individual medley.

She would accomplish similar feats as a sophomore – her only other competitive season at Stanford to this point – garnering Pac- 12 Swimmer of the Year while repeating as Pac-12 Swimmer of the Meet at the league championship meet on the strength of seven more conference titles.

Huske also competed in both the FINA World Championships and FINA Short Course World Championships in 2022, in which she claimed a combined seven gold medals, three silver medals and three bronze medals.

At the World Championships that June, Huske took gold in the 100-meter butterfly with a time of 55.64 seconds – the fourth-fastest women’s performance in world history – as well as with the 4x100-meter medley and 4x100-meter mixed medley relay teams. Her four gold-medal races at the Short Course World Championships that December were in the 50-meter butterfly, the 4x50-meter freestyle relay, 4x50-meter mixed medley relay and the 4x100-meter medley relay.

This robust record of dominance at the high school, collegiate and international levels set the stage for what Huske achieved this past summer at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

First, she avenged her fourth-place finish in the 100-meter butterfly with a Gold-Medal time of 55.59 seconds, narrowly beating out American teammate and world-record holder Gretchen Walsh by 0.04 seconds. Huske then set her sights on her own world records, helping her 4x100-meter medley and 4x100-meter mixed medley relay teams put up times of 3:49.63 and 3:37.43, respectively, the fastest ever recorded in both events. She also helped set a new American record in a Silver-Medal-winning time of 3:30.20 in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and took another individual Silver Medal in the 100-meter freestyle, touching the wall in 52.29 seconds.