While Baltimore’s Olympic contingent in swimming is down, Maryland is rising in wrestling, track and field

If there’s one lasting image of Baltimore’s ascension to international recognition on the Olympic stage, it’s this: Michael Phelps, having just swum to his 20th career gold medal, melting from teary stoicism into childlike laughter because of a distinctly Maryland tradition.

On that late August evening at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Star-Spangled Banner instrumental bellowed throughout the natatorium. Cameras caught Phelps crack. He, and the rest of the world, heard a group of Baltimoreans puncture a still moment with a raucous “O!” near the end of the anthem.

Maryland swimming was at the peak of its powers. Particularly, the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, which had a medalist every four summers since 1992.

While Baltimore is no longer at the epicenter of the Olympics — this being the second straight cycle without a swimmer competing under the NBAC banner (Bel Air gold medalist Chase Kalisz grew up swimming with NBAC but left the program before becoming an Olympian) — Maryland can lean on both a spike in other sports and hope for swimming’s resurgence.

Inside NBAC’s current headquarters at Loyola Maryland, one of three locations, coaches Tom Himes and Paul Yetter sat opposite an office desk and ping-ponged names.

“Here is so different because everybody is in a lineage of people who have done it before them,” said Yetter, who swam at NBAC himself and coached with USA Swimming’s national team. “There’s a direct link between my daughter, who’s 13, and myself on the swim team.”

Yetter swam for NBAC until 1996. That was the same year Beth Botsford, who’s four years younger, won two gold medals at the Atlanta Games. Botsford swam at NBAC through 1998 under Himes and met Phelps when he was 10. Phelps’ protege was Kalisz, who first medaled in Rio.

When Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman, left in 2015, it initiated an NBAC reboot.

The club placed a greater focus on developing its youth groups and soldiered through the pandemic with recent success to show for a snag in the Olympic-level lineage.

Ana Hazlehurst, a role model to Yetter’s daughter who will be a freshman at Indiana, broke a 31-year-old Maryland record in the 15-16 100-meter breaststroke set by Anita Nall, a 1992 Olympic gold medalist from NBAC who trained alongside Yetter.

12-year-old Jude Burkhart similarly set a new national record in the 11-12 boys 800 freestyle. According to Himes, who was careful to alleviate pressure of the comparison, Burkhart is posting faster times than Phelps did at that age.

“Short of the Olympics,” Himes said, “our kids are doing good stuff.”

NBAC aside, Maryland will still send a trio of Montgomery County swimmers to Paris: Katie Ledecky (Bethesda), Erin Gemmell (Potomac) and Phoebe Bacon (Chevy Chase). All three spent time training at Nation’s Capital Swim Club.

Baltimore isn’t the Olympic hotbed it once was when Phelps and others ruled the pool. Thus, these Paris Games will require some review of first timers and lesser known stars who are expanding Maryland’s reach in the Summer Games.

In Woodbine’s Kyle Snyder, Rockville’s Helen Maroulis and Hagerstown’s Aaron Brooks, Maryland composes 25% of the men’s and women’s freestyle wrestling teams. Only three other Maryland wrestlers have competed at the Summer Games: John Stefanowicz in 2021, Lloyd “Butch” Keaser in 1976 and Ernie Fischer in 1956.

Whether wrestling can continue to grab the spotlight as long as swimming did under Baltimore’s Phelps, Bethesda’s Ledecky and Bel Air’s Kalisz remains to be seen. But Snyder, who is seeking to become only the fourth American wrestler to earn two Olympic gold medals, didn’t concern himself with that concept.

“We have three members on the Olympic team this year, and I think there’s a lot of other great Maryland athletes who play other sports,” he said. “But I think we’re going to continue to produce a bunch of great wrestlers who can compete at the highest level.”

The same can be said for track and field. Maryland is entering an uptick on the heels of a downswing, having sent only two representatives over the last two Olympic cycles.

In 2016, Broadneck graduate Matthew Centrowitz delivered a shocking gold medal run in the 1,500-meter race, a feat no American had achieved in over a century. Waldorf’s Christina Clemons joined Centrowitz at the Tokyo Games, placing 14th in the women’s 100-meter hurdles.

Three Maryland natives will debut in Paris for Team USA track and field — all of whom are young enough to forecast Olympic representation that mirrors the aforementioned swimming era.

Bowie’s Quincy Wilson recently broke the 18U world record for the 400 three times — his fastest in 44.2 seconds. At 16, the rising junior at Bullis School in Potomac is the youngest male American athlete to join the U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Tommie Smith, an icon in the sport most famous for his protest at the 1968 games, watched the Olympic trials from home. Even through the screen, the gold medalist could sense Wilson’s poise and “courageous attitude.” Smith told The Baltimore Sun that Wilson could be “one of the greatest athletes in the 400.” American Noah Lyles, the current fastest man on the planet, wrote matter-of-factly on X, “He is HIM.”

He’s not the only Bullis star making the trip, either. Masai Russell, a 2018 graduate and former Gatorade Maryland Girls Track & Field Athlete of the Year, qualified for her first Olympics with a world-leading time of 12.25 seconds in the 100 hurdles at the U.S. Trials.

The Whittakers from Laurel are punching up in age as well. Isabella, 22, is on the younger half of the six-deep Olympic relay pool. Her 20-year-old sister, Juliette, is the youngest of three competing in the 800. Isabella admitted she long thought this stage to be a possibility but never quite so early in their careers.

“We [Maryland] do put out some of the best track athletes in the country,” their father, Paul Whittaker, said. “I’m proud to say, I know part of that are my girls, but there are girls in our league who are running on a national-caliber level.”

The sisters were competitive swimmers before pivoting to track at Mount de Sales. Their original Olympic aspirations were to be inside the pool. A picture on Isabella’s Instagram shows them as fantasizing middle schoolers wearing USA Swimming pullovers. Juliette even competed at NBAC’s Meadowbrook with Phelps watching in her peripheral vision.

“I remember being like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m literally swimming in the same pool as Michael Phelps,’” she said. “Seeing that and being so close to a dream that I wanted for myself, it felt so much more in reach.”

These are perhaps the names beginning a new lineage in Maryland’s climb back to Olympic glory.