“Jersey Boys” Dominate The Demographics Of The 2023 U.S. World Championships Team

Where do the members of the U.S. World Championships team come from?

In this article, we will be breaking down some of the trends we discovered from looking at the home states of all 52 pool and open water swimmers that will be representing the United States in Fukuoka this July. And while most of this is just harmless data collection, there are also more serious implications to these trends—they could be a reflection of which regions are the best at developing national-level talent at a young age.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Note: For the purposes of this article, a swimmer’s “home state” is the state they spent the majority of their high school years in. 

Garden State Galore

New Jersey: the state that won’t let you pump your own gas, holds high school dual meets in short course meters (sometimes), has a bracket-style state dual meet tournament, and produces the most 2023 U.S. World Championship qualifiers.

In total, seven different American swimmers from New Jersey qualified for Worlds, which is more than any other state. Those swimmers are Jack Alexy, Matt Fallon, Nic Fink, Destin Lasco, Henry McFadden, Dare Rose, and Joey Tepper. All the names listed are pool swimmers with the exception of Tepper, who does open water.

The prevalence of New Jersey swimmers on the Worlds roster is significant, as the Garden State isn’t exactly known to be a swimming hotbed. While New Jerseyans like Fink, Kelsi Dahlia, and Connor Jaeger were consistent qualifiers on senior international teams in the past, they never dominated a roster like they did this year. In addition, prior to 2022, no New Jersey club had been named a Gold Medal club by USA Swimming in well over a decade.

Jack Alexy (photo: Jack Spitser)

Unlike Nevada (the state that produced the second-most Worlds qualifiers), where five out of six Worlds team members swim for the Sandpipers of Nevada club, the seven New Jersey swimmers come from a wide variety of clubs and hometowns—but are somehow connected in several different ways.

Alexy, Fallon, Rose, and Fink all hail from North Jersey. Alexy and Fallon were in the same graduating class and swam for the Greater Somerset County YMCA club together, while Fallon and Fink are both breaststrokers and alumni of the same high school—the Pingry School. Meanwhile, the hometowns of McFadden, Lasco, and Tepper are down in South Jersey.

Then, Alexy, Lasco, and Rose became connected in college, as the three of them all swim for Cal. In addition, Lasco and Rose are in the same class. Next NCAA season, McFadden will join the Cal trio in the Pac-12, as he will be headed to swim at Stanford.

The New Jersey connection even showed at Nationals last week, when Alexy helped McFadden get onto the Worlds team. In a situation where there were already 27 projected men’s qualifiers for Worlds (one over the roster limit), Alexy beat Michael Andrew by 0.01 of a second in the 50 free to take second place and spoil Andrew’s chances at qualifying for Worlds in an Olympic event. Because the USA Swimming selection procedure prioritized relay-only swimmers over stroke 50 winners, McFadden (200 free sixth-place finisher) made Worlds over Andrew (50 fly champion).

Despite the fact that all of the New Jersey qualifiers are men, the state is seeing growing success across the board, as rising high school seniors Anna Moesch and Emily Thompson are both on the junior national team and were named two of the top 20 girls’ recruits in the class of 2024.

East Coast Dominance

Even beyond New Jersey, East Coasters made up the majority of the Worlds team. Out of the 52 swimmers on the U.S. Worlds roster, 35 of them (67%) came from states eastward of the Illinois-Iowa/Missouri border. In fact, Nevada and Texas were the only two West Coast states that had more than one World Championship qualifier.

Out of the 35 swimmers from East Coast states, 20 of them (57%) came from states that bordered the Atlantic Ocean, while the other 15 came from landlocked states. 10 out of the 17 (59%) West Coast swimmers are clustered in either Nevada or Texas, while the rest are scattered across California, Washington, Montana, Utah, Minnesota, and Alaska.

Overall, 21 out of the 50 (42%) U.S. states were represented with Worlds qualifiers. Down below is a full breakdown of the number of swimmers that come from each U.S. state.

States Ranked By Number Of  2023 U.S. World Championship Team Qualifiers:

• New Jersey (Jack Alexy, Matt Fallon, Nic Fink, Destin Lasco, Henry McFadden, Dare Rose, Joey Tepper) — 7
• Nevada (Brennan Gravley, Dylan Gravley, Luke Hobson, Katie Grimes, Bella Sims, Claire Weinstein) – 6
• Texas (Shaine Casas, David Johnston, Jillian Cox, Linsday Looney) — 4
• Indiana (Lilly King, Alex Shackell, Drew Kibler, Jake Mitchell) — 4
• Illinois (Anna Peplowski, Olivia Smoliga, Ryan Held) — 3
• Maryland (Erin Gemmell, Katie Ledecky, Chase Kalisz) — 3
• Pennsylvania (Leah Smith, Chris Guiliano, Josh Matheny) — 3
• Ohio (Hunter Armstrong, Carson Foster, Charlie Clark) — 3
• North Carolina (Baylor Nelson, Justin Ress, Ross Dant) — 3
• Connecticut (Maxine Parker, Kieran Smith) — 2
• Virginia (Torri Huske, Thomas Heilman) — 2
• Florida (Bobby Finke, Ryan Murphy) — 2
• Tennessee (Alex Walsh, Gretchen Walsh) — 2
• Montana (Katharine Berkoff) — 1
• Kentucky (Mariah Denigan) — 1
• New York (Kate Douglass) — 1
• Alaska (Lydia Jacoby) — 1
• Minnesota (Regan Smith) — 1
• Utah (Rhyan White) — 1
• California (Abbey Weitzeil) — 1
• Washington (Matt King) — 1