They put a pool where? Purdue swimmers head to Indy for Olympic trials

So much will be new for four Purdue swimmers this weekend.

For one, they’re swimming in a football stadium. And football stadiums mean crowds. For swimmers, crowds are a new thing, too.

Also new is the competition level. They don’t expect to “win,” at least not really or in a typical sense. At Olympic trials, beginning Saturday in Indianapolis, where a swimmer must be top-two in their event, most are setting personal challenges and hoping for the best.

“Making the Olympic team would be,” Masy Folcik let out harsh laughter, “a dream, honestly. Yeah. But with someone like Lilly King and the other breaststrokers, it’s just stretch.”

The Purdue senior is being pragmatic. Her best time in the event she wants to swim for the best team in the world is 7.41 seconds slower than King’s, a two-time Olympic gold medalist. That’s seven seconds in a race that takes just over a minute for most elite swimmers, enough time for King to take her swim cap and goggles off and leave the pool – an eternity, in other words.

“My goal I guess is just to go have a lot of fun,” Folcik said. “See what I can do. I guess maybe make semis or something.”

There will be ample opportunity for fun. The pool inside Lucas Oil Stadium, a first in the history of natatoriums, is just scratching the surface of a ploy to make swimming fans of a large city. A nine day tailgating hub is planned, hoping to inspire at sporting event proportions that rival the Final Four. Purdue will present it, called USA Swimming LIVE, as the university approaches the July 1 opening of Purdue University in Indianapolis.

There will be live music, with 2018 smash hit makers Lovelytheband arriving on the Georgia St. scene. Food and drinks will accompany them – along with a 66-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower to remind athletes of where these trials could take them. To Paris, to the Olympics.

“Kate and I go down Friday,” Folcik said, referring to her teammate, Kate Mouser. “We stay through Tuesday or Monday, and then we come back to Purdue. But we’ll have our deck passes. We’re probably gonna go back a couple of times and check out all the events they’re having.”

A swimming hub

Indianapolis last hosted the swimming trials in 2000, before they made a stop in Long Beach, California in 2004 before spending the next four Olympics in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sportico reported that Indiana Sports Corp. led the bid to snatch the trials from the Cornhusker State, in part by emphasizing the event’s history in Indianapolis. In 1924 before that year’s Paris Olympics, the trials were held in 62-acre Broad Ripple Park in northeast Indianapolis. An even 100 years later, athletes are back competing for a ticket to the City of Love.

“We thought that was the icing on the cake,” Talty told Sportico.

Lucas Oil Stadium was gutted of its artificial turf a couple months ago, part of the plan to upgrade it that has been in the works since last summer.

That cleared the way for the construction of three pools on two platforms that split the area of the football field in half. Plumbing and gutters, platforms and steel-paneled poolsides were put up in little more than a month. According to the IndyStar, two million gallons of water were pumped in from a fire hydrant to fill the new gleaming pits.

It’s perhaps also no coincidence that Indianapolis has been a hotbed of swimming talent for decades. The trials will be a family reunion of sorts for Purdue’s group of four.

Freshman Kate Mouser swam at Fishers in high school, and senior Coleman Modglin is from Zionsville. Junior Brady Samuels hails from Muncie, Indiana, a short drive from a Colts game if TV ever failed to suffice for the Samuels family on a Sunday.

“I’m very, very excited,” Mouser said. “I just remember like going to Lucas Oil with my family, growing up with my dad, and we’d go to watch a football game. And now, they’re going to be in the stands, but I’m actually going to be down there. It’s like I’m on the field but I’m in a pool.”

“My younger brother will be there,” Modglin said. “And my girlfriend as well. So I’m gonna have a lot of people there that I know, and it’s just gonna be a really exciting experience.”

Modglin comes from a swimming family; he grew up in the pool with his brothers. With them watching him from the stands, he’s trying to do right by what he’s said will in all likelihood be his last time swimming competitively.

“What am I trying to get out of this?” he says. “I don’t know. Closure, I guess. Going out and doing the best I can. I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career. And I’m excited about that.”