Last weekend, the Carmel High School girls won their 39th consecutive Indiana State Championship. 39 championships already sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t really put into perspective the sheer dominance they have displayed over the last four decades.
The first Indiana State Swimming Championship was contested in 1975 and the overall team title went to Lafayette Jefferson. Over the next 12 years, six other teams would win a title. Munster won three straight from 1976-1978. Ben Davis won the next three from ’79-’81. Carmel won their first title in ’82, then there was Columbus east (’83), Anderson (’84-’85), and Columbus North (’86). 1986 was the last time a non-Carmel team won the Championship.
To put these even further into perspective, some of the major events of 1986 were the Challenger exploding, the original Top Gun movie coming out, and the first ever laptop computer being invented.
Carmel’s stranglehold on the State Championship doesn’t just include the title, however. They have also won more event titles than the second-tenth place teams in history, combined. This year, they brought their total number of wins to 198, just short of an absolutely monster 200 event wins.
If we divide 198 (their total number of event wins) by 40 (the number of times they have won the title), they have averaged 4.95 event wins per Championship… at a meet that only has 11 events to begin with.
The team with the next most event wins? Ben Davis… at 20.
Here is a chart depicting every other school and Carmel’s event wins:
To make it easier, here it is broken down into percentages:
When the Carmel girls get up on the blocks, they have around a 40% chance of winning the event. Hard odds to beat.
Next year, they will be going for an even 40 straight wins, and 200 event titles.
Bolles is better..
Yes, the Carmel program is incredible, with a great coach, but let’s be real, Carmel is a high school with 5,200 students. The three schools that won the title prior to Carmel’s incredible run? Columbus North has a student enrollment (2,267) of less than half of Carmel’s. Anderson (1,722) and Columbus East (1,518) are even smaller. Carmel probably has more girls on their team in the freshman class than most programs in the state have on their entire team.
maybe the columbus schools should consider combining. lots of state championships and champions overall across all sports.
To put this into perspective, Dick Hannula’s teams won 24 consecutive state titles in Washington. That was an incredibly dominant stretch…and Carmel has won 15 MORE!
IMPRESSIVE for sure!
It isn’t a matter of Carmel recruiting. If you move to the area and you have a swimmer, it is definitely a club that feeds into the high school that you would consider. They do not need to recruit.
They recruit swimmers like colleges do, it’s a tad ridiculous
What’s the difference in state championships between Carmel & Bolles School? I’ve got to imagine they are similar in their dominance.
I think Bolles boys are at 37 in a row?
is Florida split into classes by size? Indiana doesn’t have classes in swimming.
Yeah it is
I wouldn’t have guessed Ben Davis with the second most number of wins. Carmel’s program is excellent in so many ways, not just in the pool.
Ben Davis was a powerhouse for all sports back in the day. They had quite a few boys and girls team titles.