Avery Luedke will join the Alabama women for the upcoming 2026-2027 season. Luedke just spent her freshman season with fellow-SEC program Tennessee. 

“I’m so excited to announce that I will be continuing my academic and athletic career at the University of Alabama!
I’d like to give a huge thank you to the Tennessee coaching staff for giving me the opportunity to be a Lady Vol and to all of my friends and family for supporting me throughout this process. I’m so thankful for my time at Tennessee and I will always be proud to be a LVFL.
I’m grateful for the journey that led me here, and so excited for this next chapter! Roll Tide!!”

Luedke is originally from Illinois and arrived in Knoxville last fall. She swam a season best 4:49.31 in the 500 free during the team’s midseason invite. Her season best in the 1650 free of a 16:33.91 came at Winter Juniors in December. She did not swim at the 2026 SEC Championships and instead finished her season at Tennessee’s Last Chance meet. 

Her lifetime bests still stand from high school as she swam a 4:48.42 500 free in November 2024 during her high school season and a 16:30.28 1650 free in March 2025 at NCSAs.

Luedke’s Best Times:

The Alabama women finished 4th out of 13 teams at the 2026 SEC Championships, two spots behind Tennessee’s 2nd place finish. Alabama was led by Emily Jones who tallied 80 individual points including a 2nd place finish in the 100 back with a 50.59.

Based on her best times from high school, Luedke would have been 17th in the 1650 free and 24th in the 500 free. Alabama scored 33 points in the 1650 free and 13 in the 500 free at 2026 SECs. Her 1650 free from Winter Juniors this past season would have been 19th.

Does anyone else have redistricting fatigue? It seems our Republican legislators share this sentiment. What we are currently witnessing is yet another chapter in the ongoing book of Republican inaction when it comes to Alabama politics. I once thought it was a matter of incompetence, then perhaps a lack of urgency.

However, the current redistricting issues have led me to a more cynical perspective: perhaps many of the Republicans in Montgomery are not really who we think they are.

The United States Supreme Court gave the Alabama Legislature an opportunity of a lifetime when they lifted the injunction that has forced Alabama to draw its maps based on race for years now.

Attorney General Steve Marshall, who truly is the hero of this story, understood the assignment and stepped up when needed to deliver the state one of its biggest legal victories in history. These opportunities are extremely rare, and in this political environment, conservatives cannot afford to let them pass by.

And how did the so-called conservatives in the Alabama Legislature respond? Well, they played it safe, of course, by passing an already drawn 6-1 map claiming that this was the best they could do. Settling for the path of least resistance is not leadership, it’s cowardice under the mask of fake action. If “hurry up and look busy” ever embodied a group of individuals, we saw exactly that during this last special session.

I urge the “Republicans” in Montgomery to look to their North and South. Look at Tennessee, which went from an 8-1 map to 9-0 under intense protests. You think a couple of people shouting from the gallery in the Alabama House chamber was bad?

Take a look at what transpired in the Tennessee legislature as they passed this new map. Tennessee could’ve chosen not to lift a finger and be satisfied with 8-1, but pushed through to make its state completely red. Take a look at Florida, DeSantis had a new map ready almost immediately following the SCOTUS ruling. That’s true leadership, looking ahead and preparing how to strike best. That’s called winning.

Alabama is in an even more unique position than these states, where SCOTUS essentially told us this week, “For the love, please redraw your maps!” with the removal of our injunction. And yet, our Republican legislators crossed their arms and said, “go pound sand”.

The unfortunate reality is that if they wanted to, they would. If the Republicans in Montgomery truly wanted to paint their state red, they would. If they were truly conservatives as they claim, they would bite down on their mouthpiece, put their gloves up, and go to work. Instead, they fall back on the excuse of lack of time and expect you to be satisfied with that answer. They’ll tweet out how they want a 7-0 when it’s safe, and point the finger when they underdeliver.

It seems, once again, Republicans in Alabama don’t understand the gravity of the situation. The Democrats of 2026 want to do irreversible damage to our country.

We can look at the current rise of political violence from the left and take it as a warning. If they ever come back to power, they’re coming for blood.

This doesn’t appear to hit home in Montgomery.

What they’re essentially saying is that they’re willing to send someone to Congress from this state who advocates for abortion, wide-open borders, and all of the other despicable policies of the current Democratic Party, because they want to. What other answer is there? After what has transpired and been revealed through the redistricting process, this is the only place to land.

Attorney General Marshall did what he was supposed to. SCOTUS bent over backwards to hand you this opportunity, and you didn’t just fumble it, you threw it in the stands and then claimed you won the game.

If you’re going to give refuge to Democrats in this state, just change that “R” to a “D” and call it a day. We’d have much more respect for you than we do right now.

Justin “JP” Plott is the executive producer/co-host of “The Rightside with Allison and Amie Beth” and co-owner of Rightside Media. You can find him on X @JPRightside. Watch “The Rightside with Allison and Amie Beth” every weekday from 10am-12pm CT at www.rightsidemedia.org.

Thousands of people from across the country descended on Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, on Saturday. They arrived by bus, by car and by plane to gather for the All Roads Lead to the South rally, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision last month, which essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act and severely limited protections against voting discrimination.

Organized by a coalition of national and local civic engagement groups, the rally took place outside the Alabama state capitol building, in the same plaza where the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches – three nonviolent demonstrations in support of Black voting rights – are enshrined.

“We’re here, Montgomery, not at a stopping point, but at a starting point,” Steven L Reed, mayor of Montgomery and the first Black person to hold the position, told the crowd. “We’re here in this city because of the spirit, because of the courage and because of the commitment of our forefathers and foremothers who got us to this point.”

Following the supreme court decision, Republican-led states rushed to redraw their voting maps in ways that weaken Black political power. Tennessee and Florida have already passed new maps, while Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia seem poised to follow. Mississippi temporarily paused redistricting efforts, with the state’s governor promising to revisit the issue soon.

Voting activists from these states affected by Republican redistricting attempts – along with local and national elected officials, including the senators Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock and the representatives Terri Sewell, Shomari Figures and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – took the stage to mobilize and energise attendees.

“We need to fight with all we got,” said Charlane Oliver, a Tennessee state senator who protested the state’s redistricting by standing on her desk last week. “They may draw some racist maps, but we are the south, this is our south. The south belongs to us. The south got something to say, and we gon’ speak real loud and clear in November.”

Throughout the event, spontaneous chants of “vote, vote, vote” emerged from the audience. At times, All Roads to the South felt like a worship event, harkening back to the Black church’s vital role in the civil rights movement. It began with a prayer; when an attendee had a medical event, an emcee asked those gathered to “put their praying hands together”. Multiple gospel songs were performed throughout the day.

For many attendees, being at the rally was personal. Their family members fought for voting rights. Now, they said, it’s up to them to take up the banner.

“My grandmama, my momma, my mother-in-law – our ancestors did not cross that bridge, walk during the bus boycott, my cousins got locked in the First Baptist Church [in Montgomery], across from the police station in the 60s, my other cousin got beat up by a horse up on Jackson Street – we didn’t do all that for this,” said Carole Burton, a Montgomery resident.

The day began in Selma, with a prayer service at the historic Tabernacle Baptist church, followed by a silent walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of the brutal “Bloody Sunday” violence against civil rights marchers in 1965. From there, those who attended the actions in Selma traveled by bus to Montgomery, where they were joined by thousands.

All Roads Lead to the South was not an isolated event – more than 50 satellite events were scheduled across the country for people who couldn’t make it to Alabama. Speakers also noted that the fight would continue elsewhere.

“Our task is bigger than defending the past,” Rukia Lumumba, director of the Mississippi VRA Rapid Response Coalition and M4BL Action Fund, said. “Our task is to build a democracy worthy of the people who bled to create it in the first place.”