How Dominant Is the Carmel High School Girls Team?

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 the whole top-10 and their total number of 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 50/50 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.