A front-row seat to swimming history

North coach gets to see one of his former athletes break world record

About 10 days before the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team Trials, Dan Schneider received a text message asking if he would be interested in attending. He did what any hard-core fan would do – he dropped everything and booked a flight to Indianapolis.

Once there, the Lakeville North High School swimming and diving head coach watched history unfold. World records fell. Attendance records were smashed. He could point to an Olympic qualifier and say, “You know, I coached her back in the day.”

“What an incredible experience,” Schneider said last week. “If you’re a fan of swimming, you love the trials. The energy was great, and we got to sit in Row 15 at the 15-meter mark (from the finish), which was the perfect place to watch the races.”

Schneider and his wife and daughter attended the trials as the guests of Regan Smith’s family and a couple of her sponsors. Smith, of course, is the Lakeville native who won three events at the meet – including the 100-meter backstroke, where she regained a world record she once set in 2019. Smith, 22, competed for Schneider at Lakeville North as a seventh-grader before moving on to national and international competition with the Riptide Swim Club in Apple Valley. Her older sister Brenna swam for North for six years and was a Panthers captain.

Paul Smith, Regan’s father, “texted me about a week and a half before the trials and asked if I would be interested in going,” Schneider said. “In our sport, if you get a chance to go to the trials, you go.

“When Regan was swimming, NBC sent a camera crew into the stands. They miked up Paul and interviewed a lot of us. I’m not 100 percent sure how much of it is going to be used, or when, but they got a lot of material.”

Smith’s other victories at the U.S. Trials were in the 200 butterfly and 100 backstroke. She finished third in the 100 butterfly, missing an Olympic berth in that event by one-tenth of a second.

Schneider came away as impressed with Smith’s performance away from the pool as her achievements in the water. During the trials, Smith talked at length about how lack of confidence was eroding her love for the sport, and how she got it back with the help of coaches, teammates and a sports psychologist.

“Mental health is such a big issue in sports,” Schneider said. “We saw it with the U.S. gymnast (Simone Biles, who dropped out of several events in the 2021 Olympics to address mental health concerns). I was so happy to see Regan address it and get through it.

“If you saw Regan away from the pool, you’d have no idea she was a swimmer. She’s one of the nicest, most unassuming people I’ve ever met.”

If there was a downside to the trip, it’s that Schneider couldn’t spend a lot of time with his former swimmer. Between working out, warming up, competing, cooling down, and various out-of-pool commitments, the athletes’ time basically is not their own.

“We saw Regan one time while we were there and it was for five minutes,” Schneider said. “We were hoping to see her before flying back, but she had a meeting with U.S. Olympic officials that was going to last two hours.”

The trials put the strength of U.S. swimming on full display. Smith set a world record in the backstroke, as did Gretchen Walsh in the 100 butterfly semifinals. The venue, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, also drew rave reviews.

It was the first time a swimming meet had been held in an NFL stadium. Attendance reached 22,209 on June 22, the largest ever for a swimming meet. A prelims session drew more than 17,000 fans. Attendance for all sessions cleared 285,000, an increase of more than 60 percent over the previous U.S. Trials record.

Officials for the 2028 Olympics, scheduled to be in Los Angeles, reportedly are planning to have the swimming events at SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers and site of the 2027 Super Bowl.

Soon, Smith will be off to Paris for the 2024 Games, which run July 26 through Aug. 11. Schneider doesn’t anticipate a last-minute trip to France, and he’s OK with settling into a comfortable chair in front of a TV in hopes of seeing more history.

“I heard ticket prices for the Olympic swimming are starting at $400,” he said.