Welcome to SwimCity, USA: Carmel, Indiana has 14 swimmers in the Olympic qualifiers

Monikered SwimCity, USA, the 106,000-person city of Carmel, Indiana has 14 swimmers competing in the Olympic qualifiers this week.

Welcome to Carmel, Indiana, AKA SwimCity, USA, where more swimmers will compete in the 2024 Paris Olympic Qualifiers over the next week than there are traffic lights on the roads.

The 50-square-mile, 106,000-person city is home to 14 swimmers who are taking part in 46 events in the trials from June 15-23 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Seven athletes are high schoolers, one of whom just finished eighth grade and another just graduated. The girls high school team has won 38 state championships in a row — a national record for any sport in any state — and the boys have won 13 of the last 15, with head coach Chris Plumb overseeing both teams for 18 of those years.

The tradition, history and dominance of this sport in Carmel is what is allowing a full percentage point of the 1,000 swimmers competing in the qualifiers to be from this relatively small midwest city that Mayor Sue Finkam has led the rebranded moniker of SwimCity, USA.

“Mayors really have two opportunities: That’s to convene people around important conversations and to promote the community. This does both,” she said. “It convenes us around a topic of excellence and swinging for the fences, which Carmel has done a lot of and been successful at, and also allows us to promote the heck out of an incredible community.”

Convening the community around Carmel High School

The swimming community of Carmel is funneled through neighborhood meets and the Carmel Swim Club, which has nearly 500 athletes on the competitive team and another 1,700 on the noncompetitive arm, the Carmel Swim Academy, up to Carmel High School, the only high school in the city.

Around 2008, city leaders discussed opening a second high school. As populations grow, most communities do so to create a more manageable ecosystem for thousands of teenage learners.

Carmel decided not to, and that has made all the difference for the city.

“Carmel made a decision really for the arts to have all this money pooled into one high school … which allows us to have the facilities and to support the athletics,” said Plumb.

With a student population of 5,300, Carmel High School has a TV and radio station, an automotive shop that is actively under expansion, clubs including robotics, jewelry, engineering, and a construction club that teaches students how to build tiny homes.

“They have incredible resources there for kids who are college-bound or trade-bound, and the realization was if they had two high schools, they’d have to choose who gets [which club],” Finkam said.

The city has been known for unique action plans in the past, most notably the decision to transition away from traffic lights to roundabouts. In 2023, the Wall Street Journal highlighted how former mayor Jim Brainard, who served seven straight terms, led the updating of zoning codes and tax increment financing to build mixed-use developments, the city center, walkable trails, and a network of more than 150 roundabouts to help ease traffic, decrease car accidents, and lower carbon emissions.

Photo courtesy of Carmel

Today, there are only 10 intersections under the city’s jurisdiction with traffic lights, four of which will be converted into roundabouts in 2025.

“We had stable leaders on city council, we didn’t have a lot of turnover, so we had a buy-in to the vision that lasted for a couple of decades,” said Finkam, who served on the city council for 10 years.

The city’s brand celebrates what makes the area distinct with community support and quick, decisive action from the local government, leveraging unique opportunities like the upcoming trials.

2024 Olympic Qualifiers

The people of the city take pride in their swimmers. After the 30th championship, the national record, Carmel hosted a parade for the high school swimmers. In the town square, there’s a television on which trials from the past have been aired. The city celebrated a send-off for the group of qualifier competitors in May with another parade before the swimmers left to train.

“The people of the community understand how unique that success is,” Plumb said.

The athletes competing in the qualifiers and their events are as follows:

• Berit Berglund, 100 BK
• Lynsey Bowen, 200, 400, 800 FR; 200 FL
• Ellie Clarke, 200 BK, 400 IM
• Wyatt Davis, 100, 200 BK
• Gregg Enoch, 400 FR; 200 FL; 200, 400 IM
• Kayla Han, 400, 800, 1500 FR; 400 IM
• Drew Kibler, 50, 100, 200, 400 FR
• Jake Mitchell, 200, 400 FR; 200 BK
• Kelly Pash, 50, 100, 200 FR; 100, 200 FL; 200 IM
• Aaron Shackell, 100, 200, 400, 800 FR; 100, 200 FL
• Alex Shackell, 100, 200 FR; 100, 200 FL; 200 IM
• Andrew Shackell, 200 FR
• Sean Sullivan, 200 IM
• Molly Sweeney, 100, 200 BR; 200 IM

Since 1988, there have only been two years without any swimming competitors from Carmel. Over that time, there were 51 different swimmers, and in 2012, there was a record 17 for the city. In 2021, Carmel had two swimmers qualify for the Olympics for the first time in the city’s swimming history.

“One of the things that everyone always asks me — ‘How come we don’t have more Olympians from Carmel, we have this rich swimming history?'” Plumb said. “There are more starting NFL QBs than there will be men on the swim team — every four years. It is extremely hard to have an Olympian.”

There’s promise for this 2024 group to build upon the legacy. On Saturday, University of Texas swimmer Aaron Shackell qualified for the Olympics after winning the 400-meter freestyle. Drew Kibler and Jake Mitchell, the 2021 Olympians, are back in the trial, and half the competitors are high schoolers with dominant track records. 

Lynsey Bowen, committed to Florida as a member of the class of 2025, won two state championships this season in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyles — repeating her 2023 title in both.

Ellie Clarke is just 14, yet with wins in the Indiana SC Championships, Indiana CSC Winter Invitational, Speedo Junior National Championships, and more, she has proven she is qualified to compete against athletes a decade her senior. Clarke was a finalist in four events at the Speedo Sectionals, finishing second in the 200-meter backstroke.

Kayla Han was the youngest qualifier in 2021 when she was just 13, but she now has another three years of experience and represented the United States in the 2024 World Championships. She won four freestyle events at the Speedo Sectionals in March, setting records in two of them, and set three freestyle records in a dominant Speedo Winter Junior Championship East performance in December.

Gregg Enoch just graduated and, after winning the state championship in the 500-yard freestyle this year, is set to attend Louisville. He finished second in a pair of state championship events as a junior and set a record in his 500-yard freestyle victory at the Speedo Winter Junior Championship East as a senior.

Molly Sweeney has won four state championships over the last two school years, going back-to-back in the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard breaststroke. She also set a record in the 200-yard breaststroke in the Speedo Winter Junior Championship East. She and Han are tied as the No. 2-ranked swimmer in the Swimcloud’s class of 2026 rankings.

Twins Alex and Andrew Shackell plan to carry on the family swimming legacy, with elder Aaron already qualifying. Andrew, ranked as the No. 2 boys swimmer in Indiana, placed third in both the 50– and 100-yard freestyles in the state championships this season after winning both events in the sectionals.

Alex’s Swimcloud page is littered with first-place finishes and Indiana records, having set state records in the 100- and 200-meter fly in March at the Speedo Sections, winning four state championships between the last two seasons, and dominating the Speedo Winter Junior Championships. In the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, she won silver alongside Katie Ledecky.

Plumb told a story about the World Aquatics team, where each player received a poker chip from the U.S. team coach to represent going “all-in” in this tournament. “Katie Ledecky gave hers to Alex right before they swam on the relay together,” Plumb said.

Entering the Olympic qualifiers, athletes will swim alongside elite athletes who demonstrate “what excellence really looks like, the amount time and commitment and, to me, the level of focus that it takes,” Plumb said.

They’re doing it together, as a unit that has swam alongside each other for the majority of their lives.

“The support they have for each other is just unbelievable … They know that they need each other,” Plumb said. “That, to me, is the best part: the camaraderie and the willingness to do more for their teammates, and the amount of support it takes to be on this level.”