Rylee Erisman Sprinting Through Junior Pan Pacs Toward Senior Level
This year, the United States assembled its fastest-ever collection of female 100 freestylers on the way to an American record and silver medal in the 400 freestyle relay at the Paris Olympics. At the U.S. Olympic Trials, a time of 53.86 was insufficient for a spot on that relay, with a sixth-place tie between Erika Connolly and Catie DeLoof setting up a swim-off from which Connolly would emerge with the last spot on the team bound for Paris.
During that massive selection meet held in front of a world-record capacity crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium, swimming enthusiasts got their first look at a swimmer potentially on the verge of breaking through to the senior level. Rylee Erisman, a 15-year-old from Windermere Laker Aquatics in Florida, qualified for semifinals in the 100 backstroke and 100 free, missing the final of the freestyle race by less than two tenths.
Then, Erisman secured her spot in the Trials final of the 50 free. Less than three months after becoming the first 14-year-old American to swim under 25 in the event, Erisman swam a best time of 24.62 to finish fifth. The only swimmers to beat her were all headed to the Olympics: Simone Manuel, Gretchen Walsh, Abbey Weitzeil and Torri Huske.
And two months later, Erisman got her first chance to shine internationally when she represented the U.S. at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships, held last week in Canberra, Australia. Her results: stellar, with five gold medals and one silver. Individually, she won the 100 free in 53.76, setting a new meet record, and she clipped another hundredth off the mark while leading off the U.S. women’s 400 free relay. Erisman also took silver in the 50 free, coming in just two hundredths behind Australia’s Milla Jansen.
Also in Canberra, Erisman was a key contributor on four American relays that clobbered their competition. She split as fast as 53.68 in her final swim of the meet when she anchored the American women to a meet record in the 400 medley relay.
Those performances have put Erisman into elite company, even though she is merely a high school sophomore months past her 15th birthday. She is the second-fastest 50 freestyler ever in the age group behind Claire Curzan and ahead of accomplished swimmers like Walsh and Manuel. In the 100 free, she sits fourth in the age group by a tiny margin, within two tenths of Curzan (53.55), Missy Franklin (53.63) and Walsh (53.74) while achieving a quicker mark than Manuel did when she qualified for her first World Championships in 2013.
Smart money suggests that Erisman will knock off both records in the year-and-a-half before she ages up, but with just a little more improvement, she could factor into the senior-level U.S. team as early as June 2025, when the team bound for the World Championships in Singapore will be selected.
Junior Pan Pacs was Erisman’s first foray into foreign waters, but she showed sufficient mastery of the competition in that one trip that another step forward could be on the horizon.