By AMY ADAMS
news@readthereporter.com
While the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have officially ended, Carmel Swim Club (CSC) is ramping up for a rise in interest in competitive swimming participation.
“Every year we host new swimmer evals for Carmel Swim Club,” said Maggie Mestrich, director of business development for CSC.
While kids enrolled at Carmel Swim Academy (CSA) are evaluated on an ongoing basis throughout the year, Mestrich said that summer evaluations are for kids who aren’t enrolled at CSA.
“They may be kids who had fun swimming at the neighborhood pool or kids who took lessons somewhere else,” Mestrich said. “Generally speaking, anyone who is at least kindergarten age and can swim 25 yards each of freestyle and backstroke is eligible.”
If children don’t meet the eligibility requirement, Mestrich said they will be referred to CSA.
“We want children to feel confident in their swimming and ready for that next challenge,” Mestrich said.
While CSC generally sees anywhere from 50 to 70 kids at summer evaluations, the club has already evaluated more than 100 swimmers this summer and expects the evaluation on Wednesday, Aug. 14 to be even larger.
“We have essentially tripled our interest,” Mestrich said.
The increased interest is due in part to Indianapolis hosting the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming at Lucas Oil Stadium in June.
“We went to the Olympic trials as a family,” Mestrich said. “We got to see Alex Shackell qualify, and that lit a fire for my son. He has been eligible to participate in the swim club for a couple of years now, but he didn’t really have any interest until now.”
In addition, the City of Carmel rebranded itself as “Swim City USA” in honor of the 14 Carmel swimmers who participated in the swim trials.
“We really felt the love from the city,” Mestrich said. “We’ve seen great support from the broader community which is really exciting.”
Carmel Mayor Sue Finkam joins Carmel Swim Academy days after temporarily renaming the city “Swim City, USA.” (Photo provided by City of Carmel)
The city was host to a watch party at Midtown Plaza on Saturday, July 27. Midtown Plaza also showed the Olympics every day on the big screen, so CSC was able to gather on July 30, 31, and Aug. 1 to watch events, such as Drew Kibler winning silver in the Men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay.
“We were very excited to encourage our team to go to the Olympic swim trials and to come to the watch parties,” Mestrich said. “We want to spark that love, and we do see it happening.”
Mestrich said that Drew Kibler and Jake Mitchell, both Carmel Swim Club swimmers on the U.S. Men’s Swim Team in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, talked about being inspired by watching Michael Phelps win the gold.
“You cannot overstate the value of seeing one of your teammates achieve on the largest stage the world has to offer,” Mestrich said.
Along with encouraging kids to want to start swimming competitively, Olympic viewership has inspired some current CSC swimmers to work harder.
“Maybe they say, ‘I want to go to more practices’ or maybe ‘I want to talk to my coach about trying a harder event,’” Mestrich said.
She wears a bracelet that reads, “For The Dream.”
“The Olympic creed is ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ – ’Faster, Higher, Stronger,’” Mestrich said. “It’s not ‘Fastest, Highest, Strongest.’ It is about the journey and about improvement of the self and against where you were before. There is not an end. We use this moment to inspire our entire team to keep working and to keep dreaming.”
Mestrich said it’s easy to get excited when adults see a young swimmer doing well, however CSC focuses on long-term athletic development. What determines long-term competitive success, she said, is intrinsic motivation.
Is their drive to do well at practice coming from inside them? That’s the question Mestrich said they must ask.
“I don’t want to downplay the commitment of an entire family,” Mestrich said. “But when a swimmer is willing to take ownership, that’s what we’re really looking for.”
Every swimmer won’t have that level of commitment, Mestrich said, and that’s expected. CSC has many swimmers for whom swimming isn’t their only activity.
“We believe in the power of ‘and,’” Mestrich said. “We want to make sure swimming is accessible, but we want to empower kids to try other activities.”
As a way to make sure all kids have access to swimming, CSA offers free lessons to children who qualify for free or reduced lunch programs and to families enrolled in the county utilities assistance program. This applies to the team program at CSC, as well.
“It’s really important to us that we are growing the impact of swimming, not just on the learn-to-swim stage but the competitive stage as well,” Mestrich said. “We’re always looking for grants and donors to fund that.”
For information about the upcoming swim evaluations on Wednesday, Aug. 14 or to support Carmel Swim Club, visit gomotionapp.com/team/incsc/page/home. To learn more about Carmel Swim Academy, go to carmelswimacademy.org.