The name on everyone’s lips in U.S. breaststroke circles recently is someone whose primary profession is not “being an athlete”. Indiana Swimming’s Director of Operations Van Mathias – surely the fastest director of ops in the nation, at least we’d hope? – is that name, and he does not look like slowing down soon.
Following on from setting a pair of best times in long course, going 26.57 in the 50 breast and 59.45 in the 100 breast, he has then soared up the rankings in yards after posting swims of 49.93 (#8 all-time) and 49.54 (#3 all-time, 0.03 seconds of the American Record).
It has not been a simple path to the top for him however. Breaststroke was not the stroke he specialised in as a junior, nor through his first four years in the NCAA. He finished second behind Luca Urlando in the 200 fly at Junior Pan Pacs in 2018, and was a fly swimmer who crossed into IM in college – at a minimum a hop, skip and jump away from the highly specialised world of elite breaststroke.
Maybe though his background in butterfly has been conducive to the switch? After all, butterfly as a stroke was derived from breaststroke – surely it would be but a small step to then be turning fly swimmers into breaststrokers?
The fact that there are relatively few elite swimmers to have completed that crossover is not a symptom of butterfly. Breaststroke remains the most specialised of all the strokes, and successful converts are few and far between. The majority of swimmers who swim breaststroker and another stroke are generally IM swimmers.
Of the 50 swimmers to have been 2:10.00 or better in the 200 breast over the last three years, only three swim another stroke at a high level in long course – Daiya Seto, Kosuke Makino, and Leon Marchand, all medley swimmers.
The 100 breast sees something slightly different among its top 50 over that time period. Jiajun Sun (9th, 58.73) is an elite short course 50 fly swimmer (and the Chinese Record holder), Michael Andrew (41st, 59.52) also crosses over between fly and breast, and Mathias himself is a top-40 swimmer in both the 100 breast (34th, 59.45) and 50 fly (28th, 23.06).
Mathias’ initial breakout came in short course yards, capping off a fine final year at Indiana with a 2nd-place finish in the 100 breast in a time of 50.60 at the 2023 NCAA Championships. He stepped away from competing for more than two years after that meet, becoming Indiana’s Swimming Director of Operations after his graduation.
It was after the U.S. National Championships at the start of June last year, where the breaststroke results were relatively lackluster compared to both previous years and the contemporary international field, that Mathias and the Indiana Coaching staff thought they could see an opportunity for the Portland native to be among the very best in the nation.
Eight weeks later at the U.S. Summer Championships, he made his first senior National team with a 26.76 in the 50 breast. That made him the fastest U.S. man in 2025 and cemented a spot on this year’s Pan Pacs team – eight years after competing at the junior version of that competition and winning a pair of silvers in the 100 and 200 fly.
Those fly chops have not fully deserted him – Mathias was 23.06 in the 50 fly at the Pro Swim Series just two weeks ago, and has an under-the-radar 50 free. He clocked 18.48 in yards this week, having been 22.04 in long course last August, and could be a national final-level threat there as well.
He was no slouch in breaststroke even before he made it his priority in recent years. He swam the 100 breast at the 2018 Junior Pan Pacs, just missing the ‘B’ final in 18th in a time of 1:03.48. His rise in yards, and subsequent explosion in meters, were still meteoric. A drop of five seconds in his final year in the NCAA was echoed with the ascent of Julian Smith last year, and vindicated a decision to completely switch up his event line up.
Gone was the 100 fly/200 fly/200 IM lineup which he had swum at every Big Ten championships, making 9 ‘A’ finals through four years, as well as at the 2019 and 2021 NCAA Championships. Instead, with a training program featuring less yardage than ever before, he went for the 50 free/100 free/100 breast.
Three top-two finishes and a first individual conference title at Big Tens followed, before he became a three-time individual All-American just a month later in Minneapolis, with personal bests of 18.89 (10th) in the 50 free, 41.33 (7th) in the 100 free, and 50.57 (2nd) in the 100 breast.
However, even with his breakout in yards there was not an immediate translation to meters – that had to wait until last summer.
Mathias has shot up the global and U.S. rankings in meters (and yards, thanks to a couple of scintillating swims in January) since then. His initial improvements in yards were not immediately realised in long course meters for the relatively simple reason that he did not swim a long course meet through the entirety of his fifth year at Indiana. After swimming the 2022 U.S. National Championships in July 2022, his next meet in the big pool was in June 2025.
Since that meet, the Indy Cup Time Trials, he has been on a steep upwards trajectory. In just seven months he has sliced almost two seconds off his 100 breast, and dropped a 26.57 50 breast at the Pro Swim Series last month to soar to #14 all-time.
Here’s how those improvements look – and remember that the date scale on this graph encompasses just seven months.
World and US Rankings only included for top 250/100
100 Breast (LCM)
50 Breast (LCM)
100 Breast (SCY)
You can almost track his improvements in real time – in the long course 100 he has been dropping nearly a hundredth of a second per day. His 50 has been improving at an even faster per-meter pace.
Days is different for meters and yards
- Meters – between 06/26/25 and 01/14/26 (100 breast) or 01/15/26 (50 breast)
- Yards – between 12/02/22 and 01/31/26
| Event | Days | Time Dropped (s) | Time Dropped per Day (milliseconds per day) |
| 50 Breast (M) | 205 | 1.98 | 9.8 |
| 100 Breast (M) | 204 | 1.27 | 6.2 |
| 100 Breast (Y) | 1155 | 2.72 | 2.4 |
Although U.S. Nationals will not be used to select any U.S. international teams for this summer, Mathias is likely to continue his progression in both the 50 breast and the 100 breast.
To round off, here’s every 100 breast LCM swim we could find for Mathias.
