Three of Upper Arlington’s best are spending their summers not taking a well-deserved rest but vying for a spot at the Olympics.
Katie Trace, Parker Neri and Avery Voss, all alumni of Upper Arlington High School and the Upper Arlington Swim Club, qualified for the Olympic Trials for swimming and are competing in June for a spot in Tokyo. USA Swimming allows competitors to represent both their college and club teams, Trace says, so they will continue to symbolize the place they grew to love the sport.
Mike de Bear, the men’s coach at the Upper Arlington Swim Club, has worked with all three for at least a decade. He was never Trace’s head coach, he says, but he’s overseen time with all of them at one point or another. He’s thrilled they all earned this opportunity.
“It’s incredibly hard to make the team, but this to me in a lot of ways is the culminating achievement in swimming,” de Bear says. “Only two people per event make the Olympic team, and in the US especially, that means you went up (against) people ranked in the top five to 10 in the world that don’t make our team. It’s just an incredible honor for all three of them.”
Trace already competed in Wave I of the trials in Omaha, Nebraska. The trials are split into two “waves” to mitigate any public health concerns.
John Sands, the women’s coach at the Upper Arlington Swim Club, trained with Trace last summer, he says. Given the way she never complained, approached everything she worked on with grace and had major success at OSU, Sands says he wasn’t too surprised she made the cut for trials.
Trace, now a graduate student and star swimmer at The Ohio State University, previously qualified for the trials in 2016. This time around, she went even further. She qualified for Wave II, which will run June 13-20, in two events: the 200 Butterfly and the 400 IM. As the seventh seed, she won the 200 Butterfly by the tip of her fingers, edging Texas’ Emma Sticklen by .01 of a second. She earned second place in the 400 IM after placing eighth in prelims.
If she does well again in Wave II, she’ll secure her place on the Olympic team.
Voss, who just graduated from UAHS this spring, will be swimming for Stanford starting this fall. He earned a spot for the trials in the 50 freestyle. He notched a time of 23.42, just .66 behind the winner, and wasn’t able to qualify for Wave II.
Neri, who just graduated from the University of Texas, is competing at the Canadian Swim Trials, which will run June 19-23. Neri’s mother is Canadian, and he has the eligibility to try to earn a spot on Canada’s Olympic team, de Bear says.
Neri will compete in the 400 freestyle, 200 freestyle and 1500 freestyle.
"Qualifying for the Canadian Olympic Trials is a huge honor and one that I would have never believed if you told me when I was a little kid in age-group swimming," he says. "It is one of the biggest stages that an athlete can compete at, and I am still in disbelief that I am in the position that I am in swimming."
All three Upper Arlington natives are ecstatic to be able to represent their colleges and hometown clubs. For Trace, she hopes she’ll be able to inspire the next generation of Upper Arlington swimmers. She was once in their shoes — and now she’s emulating them.
“It’s really inspiring to see people compete at the highest level of swimming on our soil, basically, because I remember being a younger swimmer and seeing people for Upper Arlington do that, too,” Trace says. “I really appreciate that I’m able to be that light, I guess, for younger kids and inspire them.”
Bre Offenberger is an editorial assistant. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
