Editorial content for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships is sponsored by FINIS, a longtime partner of Swimming World and leading innovator of suits, goggles and equipment. Chris Plumb Added to U.S. World Championships Team Coaching Staff Following the withdrawal of Stanford women’s coach Greg Meehan from the American coaching staff for the World Championships, Chris Plumb has been appointed to take his place. Plumb is the leader of one of the country’s most dominant high school programs in Carmel, Ind., and his swimmers made an enormous impact at last week’s U.S. Nationals. Carmel’s Alex Shackell qualified for her first senior-level international team with a fifth-place finish in the 200 freestyle after she narrowly missed out on a spot in the 200 butterfly. Drew Kibler, a Carmel alum once again training with the team, qualified for Worlds as part of the U.S. men’s 800 free relay, as did alum Jake Mitchell (now training at the University of Florida). Carmel is the only city that is the hometown of three members of the Worlds team. The remaining coaching staff for Worlds will include Capitani, Bowman and open water head coach Ron Aitken along with assistants Blaire (Bachman) Anderson, Cory Chitwood, Braden Holloway, Ray Looze, Anthony Nesty and Eddie Reese. Additionally, USA Swimming announced several updates to the roster for Fukuoka with regard to the 50-meter stroke events, for which selection is not prioritized. Swimmers who won these races at U.S. Nationals were the final selection priority for the team, even behind relay alternates, and the second swimmer in each event is drawn from athletes already on the team. Because of a roster crunch, Michael Andrew was left off the team after he was the only swimmer who won a 50-meter stroke race at Nationals and did not qualify in another race (the other five winners were all relay alternates or individual qualifiers). That meant two openings for the United States in the 50 fly, and those spots will be filled by Dare Rose, the 100 fly winner, and Shaine Casas, the 100 fly third-place finisher who qualified for the team as the runnerup in the 200 IM. The other possible candidate to swim the 50 fly was Ryan Held, sixth in the 50 fly final and on the team for sprint freestyle races. Spots in all women’s 50-meter races plus the men’s 50 backstroke went to the 1-2 finishers in their respective events at Nationals, with all of those swimmers earning bids for Fukuoka in other events. In the men’s 50 breaststroke, Nic Fink will be the lone American representative since no other swimmer on the team owns a qualifying time in the one-lap race. Read the full announcement from USA Swimming here.
