2024 Paris Olympian for the US Mariah Denigan has changed her training base after graduating from Indiana in December. Denigan will now train at Ohio State under Norm Wright.
“After graduating from IU in December I had an opportunity to train in Germany. I was there for two months and Ohio State is my home base now. I swam for Coach Norm in club swimming for the NKY Clippers and he has been super helpful throughout my entire swimming career. I loved my time and my coaches at IU but I needed a change.”
Denigan competed for Indiana at the collegiate level and finished her NCAA career in March 2025 at the 2025 NCAA Championships where she was 18th in the 1650 free and 41st in the 500 free. While at Indiana, she primarily trained under Cory Chitwood who was a member of the US coaching staff at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
This past summer, Denigan represented the US at the 2025 World Championships in the 10K open water race, the 3K knockout sprint, and was a member of the US mixed 4×1500 open water relay.
The 2025 World Championships were her most recent competition until yesterday when she won the National Title in the women’s 10K race. She represented Ohio State in the event.
Denigan will now train under Ohio State Associate Head Coach Norm Wright who was Head Coach and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Clippers from 2015-2019. Denigan swam for Northern Kentucky Clippers for most of her club career, and departed the club in fall 2019, just after Wright’s departure to join NOVA of Virginia. Denigan then represented Lakeside Swim Team (KY) until she arrived at Indiana in fall 2021.
Denigan will join fellow open water US National Team member Charlie Clark in Columbus. Clark spent his collegiate career at Ohio State and also represented the US in summer 2025 at the World Championships in the open water events.
Mariah is a very level headed, non dramatic person. She enjoyed her time at IU and is now going to thrive in a new environment, wishing her nothing but the best
I’m curious to know how much each program trains in open water as opposed to in the pool.
Where was she training in Germany?
I don‘t know how long she was in Germany, but she had one event on Feb, 14th in a pool in Magdeburg, where she got a second place over 5000 meter in 57:47,41 ( behind Isabel Gose in around 56:15).
Would be interesting to hear her describe different methods in each program/coach, technique, training, type of attention. Unfortunately what could make the sport more interesting is veiled in secrecy.
We all knew this was coming lol