The decision to enter an event because she was not slated to compete that day in the Phillips 66 National Championships paid off for a Carmel High School swimmer.
The 200-meter freestyle is not the specialty of Alex Shackell, who will begin her junior year in the fall. She was already entered in four other events during the national meet June 27-July 1 at the IU Natatorium in Indianapolis but wanted to fill a gap in her schedule. She was seeded 45th in the 200 freestyle and figured she would relax, give it her all in the preliminaries and see what happened.
And what happened was she qualified for the final, finished fifth with a time 4.5 seconds faster than her seed time, and earned a place on Team USA in the women’s 800 freestyle relay for the 2023 World Aquatic Championships, set for July 14 to 30 in Fukuoka, Japan.
Shackell will be one of three Carmel swimmers competing in the world meet. Drew Kibler, who like Shackell represented the Carmel Swim Club at nationals, earned a spot on the men’s 800 relay team by finishing third in the 200 final. He’ll be joined on the relay team by a Carmel Swim Club alumnus, Jake Mitchell, a 2020 Carmel graduate who represented the University of Florida in the nationals. Mitchell was fourth in the men’s 200 freestyle final. Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
Shackell thought her best chance to earn a place on Team USA was in the butterfly events. She finished sixth in the 100 butterfly and fifth in the 200 butterfly.
“I had put so much focus on my (butterfly) leading up to the meet that I kind of forgot about the freestyle,” said Shackell, adding she tends to put unnecessary pressure on herself when she thinks too much about what she is doing. In the 200 freestyle, she was relaxed because she hadn’t expected to place so high.
“I just went for it in the morning (preliminaries),” she said. “I knew it was going well because I felt good.”
Carmel Swim Club Coach Chris Plumb described Shackell as the first to arrive at the pool for practice and the last to leave. She is diligent about her technique, asks for feedback and is confident in her abilities, he said.
“For 16 years old, she understands just the simple thing that, ‘If I put in more, I get back more in return,’’’ Plumb said.
Kibler, 23, a 2018 Carmel High School graduate, wanted to qualify for the world meet in the individual 200 freestyle, in which he was seeded first. He placed third, missing out on second place and an individual berth by .12 seconds.
He initially was disappointed in the outcome. But after the awards were handed out, he met a young fan and gave him his medal and a stuffed animal he had received.
“Seeing his reaction to that kind of put it in perspective,” Kibler said. “It made me realize this whole thing is kind of a journey.”
Plumb said he knows Kibler will find motivation in not having reached his individual goal in the national meet.
“He’s a competitor, he expected to win, and he didn’t, and he was disappointed. I think that’s OK,” Plumb said.
Team USA is the reigning world champion in the men’s 4X200 freestyle relay, having set a short-course record of 6 minutes, 44.12 seconds while winning in Melbourne. The goal in Fukuoka is simple, Kibler said.
“I’m going in there to win,” he said. “I want to win with my team, Team USA.”
