When Priscilla Smith was 13 years old living in Alabama, she created a video to express her excitement for the upcoming Olympic swimming trials. Earlier this summer, her father received a phone call asking him to convey a question to his daughter. After that phone call, 24 hours later, Priscilla Smith became a medal escort for the 2024 Olympic Swim Trials.
In July 2024, at the Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis hosted the 2024 Olympic Swim Trials with around 20,000 people watching. Smith, now a Carmel High School swimmer, helped make it all happen. As a medal escort, Smith got to experience the trials first-hand and witness the behind-the-scenes of it all. She and three other high school students from all over Indiana carried out the duties of being an Olympic medal escort for the 2024 Olympic Trials.
“We could only watch it on the screen, but we could hear everything. And so once you go out on deck, the energy was absolutely insane. Like I think the first night it was like 20,000 to 22,000 people,” Smith said.
“I was really shocked at first, Smith added. “Out of all the people in Indiana, they chose me, but I was so excited because I really wanted to see like my favorite athletes swim and it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, like it happens once every four years.”
The selection, Smith said, involved a Zoom call, dress shopping for the occasion and only one run-through before the actual trials began.
“Just the day before trials, we had a test run and then, boom, we went right into it.” She said. “But it was amazing because they had so many different opportunities for people in the Indianapolis area. I know they had a bunch of people, some from Carmel, Fishers, Center Grove got to be basket carriers, and then during a test run they had swimmers from Center Grove who were (acting as) the swimmers.”
Smith laughed as she recalled the Center Grove swimmers jumping into the Olympic pool acting as if they were competing in the trials during their test run.
As an athlete in the Carmel Swim Club, Smith said she enjoyed the fact that the trials were so close to home and that she was able to see some of her fellow teammates compete. With more than 1,000 swimmers competing in the event, 14 were from Carmel swim club here in Indiana, one of whom was junior, Molly Sweeney.
Sweeney said, “It was weird knowing that I was at the meet.” As a younger competitor, Sweeney said she got to experience the spotlight as well as the stress that comes along with swimming in front of 20,000 people.

She said, “The hardest challenge was definitely when things got really hard. Sometimes you want to quit, but a swimmer mindset is you just can’t quit,” She said. “You have to keep going and finding little details to get better at, and just swimming to have fun.”
Part of that fun, Sweeney said was because of her teammates and the swimming community around her.
Sweeney said, “I definitely wouldn’t do swimming if it wasn’t for the people. They make it so fun and I love my teammates and I’m so grateful to be part of a great environment.”
Smith said she has a similar view, in that Carmel swimming is definitely a big community filled with lots of friends and teammates.
“Getting to watch (fellow and past teammates) (senior) Alex (Shackell), (junior) Molly (Sweeney), (senior) Lynsey (Bowen), Gregg (Enoch) and Aaron (Shackell) swim, I was really, really proud, especially because I got to give Alex her medal, which is really nice,” Smith said.
Alex Shackell and her brother Aaron Shackell, both qualified and competed in the 2024 Olympics where they were able to represent the USA in Paris. Chris Plumb, coach of the Carmel Swim Team, who was recently named best coach of Carmel Clay Schools, went to Paris with them. Under his leadership, the Carmel Swim Club continues to dominate at the state, national and now even international level with three of it’s past alumni qualifying for the Olympics after the trials right here in Lucas Oil. After the Trials ended, Plumb was selected to be an assistant coach for the 2024 Paris Olympics where Carmel brought three swimmers to compete, Alex Shackell brought home both a gold and silver medal.
Plumb said, “When I first started at Carmel, as head coach back in 2006, Carmel had never had an Olympian in swimming before. It was a great high school team, but that was what it was, it was not a national presence. And so it was my goal to use the high school at the time, which had won 20 straight championships, to use that as a catapult to continue to excel at the national level.”
“It was awe inspiring just because it’s so cool to see how far our sport has come,” Plumb added. “Especially in our hometown. In our sport, once every four years, it’s so infrequent. It’s hard to put into words, watching people that you trained and coached and been through the highs and lows and, to see their whole personality, their whole range of emotions, you know, and to see the hard work, transform into Olympians is just, it’s amazing.”