USA Swimming Announces 41 Swimmers for 2022 Junior Pan Pacs

USA Swimming has revealed its roster for the 2022 Junior Pan Pacific Championships.

• The 2022 Junior Pan Pacific Championships will be held from August 24-27 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The list includes a number of the United States’ biggest names including National Age Group Record smashers and 15-year olds Maximus Williamson and Thomas Heilman, near-miss World Championship team member Erin Gemmell, and recent National Age Group Record breakers Daniel Diehl and Ilya Kharun.

Arguably the best team that the U.S. has ever sent to this meet, in a year where the U.S. won’t have a team at the World Junior Championships, one notable eligible name is missing: Lydia Jacoby.

The Olympic gold medalist in the 100 breaststroke finished 4th in that event at the US International Team Trials in April, missing the team for the World Championships. She is, however, age eligible for Junior Pan Pacs, and there is no criteria that would disqualify her.

Jacoby instead will travel with a group of current and future Texas Longhorns (including Gemmell, who is on this Junior Pan Pacs roster) to race in the Mare Nostrum series starting next week.

• See the full selection criteria here.

USA Swimming’s selection criteria chose the fastest 18 & unders (born in 2004 or later) from the US International Trials in April. They were limited to 20 boys and 20 girls on the roster, though the roster wound up with 20 girls and 21 boys. USA Swimming has not responded to SwimSwam’s request for more information on the decision to expand the roster.

The only other swimmer who we calculated to be eligible, but who are not on the roster, is Charlotte Hook on the girls’ side.

The roster will include 13-year old Kayla Han, who has broken a number of National Age Group Records as an 11-12 and who is already honing in on 13-14 records. She was the youngest qualifier for last summer’s US Olympic Trials.

There is also a brother-sister pair on the team: Alex and Aaron Shackell from the Carmel Swim Club in Indiana are both scheduled for the meet. That continues a family affair in international swimming: their father Nick represented Great Britain at the 1996 Olympic Games. Their mom, Ali, was also an All-American swimmer at Auburn.

The team will be led by Brent Arckey, who is the head coach of the Sarasota Sharks in Florida. He was the coach of Tokyo 2020 Olympic medalist in the 400 IM Emma Weyant, and of two members of this team: Gracie Weyant (Emma’s younger sister) and Michaela Mattes.

Besides Carmel, which also qualified Berit Berglund, and Sarasota Sharks, other clubs with multiple swimmers qualified include Greater Somerset County YMCA (Anna Moesch, Emily Thompson), SwimMAC Carolina (Ben Delmar, Matthew Lucky), Long Island Aquatic Club (Cavan Gormsen, Tess Howley), Metroplex Aquatics (Zhier Fan, Waston Nguyen – both male 100 breaststrokers), Tide Swimming (Kayla Wilson, Bobby Dinunzio), and New Albany Aquatic Club (Spencer Aurnou-Rhees, Hudson Williams).

While many top juniors, like Katie Ledecky, surpassed this meet by the time they were good enough for this meet, other big stars used this as a pathway to senior international success. That includes swimmers like Michael Andrew, Olivia Smoliga, Torri Huske, Luca Urlando, and Alex Walsh, who are all Junior Pan Pacs alumni.

At the last edition of the Junior Pan Pacific Championships in 2018, the U.S. led the medal tally with 54, including winning 27 gold medals in 35 events. Australia was 2nd with 4 golds among 13 medals, while Japan won 23 total medals.

Canada (2 golds, 12 total), China (1 gold, 2 total), and New Zealand (0 gold, 1 total) also medaled at that meet.

*Club affiliation when athlete had their qualifying swim.
**Matthew Lucky is listed as being in the 200/400 free on the official USA Swimming roster. We believe that this is an error, and he was selected in the 200 breast.
Events listed are the events each athlete qualified for the team in. Athletes may choose to swim additional events at the 2022 Junior Pan Pacific Championships.