Indiana girls earn All-American awards

By Darrell Butler

Contributing Writer

Becoming an All-American swimmer is not easy. In recent years, the
NISCA had awarded the All-American designation to the top 100 public
school swimmers/divers in each of the 13 events and the top 30 private
school swimmers/divers in each of the events. This year, the NISCA
awarded All-American designation to the top 130 swimmers in each event,
ignoring whether the swimmer was from a public or private school and
choosing not to adjust the number to account for the increasing
popularity of the sport.

Keeping in mind that there are over 250,000 high school swimmers, the
percent of swimmers who earn an All-American Award is very small. So
how many of this year�s All-Americans do you think came from Indiana?

There are 50 states plus the District of Columbia. If you guess that
there are about the same number of All-Americans in each state, you
would estimate 2-3 per event in Indiana. It turns out that two states
did not have swimming this year, but that really would not affect your
guess. If you based your guess on state population, since Indiana has
just over 2% of the national population, you also would estimate 2-3
per event. But swimming is relatively popular in Indiana. About 3.5% of
Indiana high school students participate on a swim team. Given the
popularity here in Indiana, you might actually guess a little higher
than the numbers above, maybe 4-5 swimmers per event.

Perhaps you are not surprised to learn that the swimmers in
Indiana earned far more than that number of All-Americans Awards.
Overall, Indiana was ranked 6th among states in the total number of
All-American awards.

The Hoosier girls earned 166 All American Awards. The only states
earning more have much larger populations than Indiana (CA – 311, IL ââ?¬â??
235, PA – 232, TX – 222, OH ââ?¬â?? 178).

Below is a list of the All-American performances for Indiana High School swimmers:

 

 

The schools and names are an impressive list of Indiana athletes.
There were 32 girls who earned All-American Awards for individual
swims. Many of these girls earned awards for more than one event. As
you can see in the table below, generally schools who finished well at
the high school state swim meet had several of these swimmers.

 

Particularly interesting is that 21 of these girls were not
seniors and will probably return next year. Carmel, North Central, and
Hamilton Southeastern will return the most All Americans. I suspect
that these teams will once again be battling for the championship.

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