MORGANTOWN — The 2024 Summer Olympics will see the world’s best athletes compete for their country in pursuit of an Olympic Medal.
Before Team USA sends its athletes to Paris, France to compete against the world, some will have to compete against each other for the right to represent their country in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
The trials are set to be held throughout the next week, June 15-23, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, and four swimmers with local ties will be hitting the water with hopes of earning a spot on Team USA.
Caroline Riggs, Kaitlyn Johnson, Danny Berlitz and Justin Heimes each qualified for the 2024 Team Trials this year and have been training at the WVU swimming and diving facility at Mylan Aquatic Center.
Riggs, a graduate and multi-time state champion at Morgantown High, recently completed her freshman year at Yale University. She set the new school record in the 400 IM with a time of 4:12.65.
Riggs qualified for three events at the team trials, the 400 IM, 800 freestyle and 1500 freestyle.
“I want to go into it and be able to appreciate the experience,” she said. “Competing against some of the best athletes in the world is something special. I’ll remind myself to stay calm and hopefully come away with some of my best times. This season at Yale was really good for me and I swam some of my lifetime-best times. Swimming in a football stadium will be fun, too.”
WVU’s Danny Berlitz will compete in the 200 and 400 IM races in Indianapolis. He felt some relief knowing he had locked up a spot in the 2024 Team Trials after qualifying for them four years ago in 2020.
“That allowed me some freedom to focus on swimming short courses collegiately the next few years,” he said. “This year was heavily geared toward long-course swimming because of the team trials coming up. I’ve dreamed of this since I was a kid, and I hope to soak in the experience and have fun with it. Being able to not only swim there but also see the others competing is awesome.”
Heimes, a teammate of Berlitz at WVU, has had his sights set on qualifying for the team trials after his mother, who swam at the University of Virginia, shared stories of her own from competing in the Olympic Trials. He will be competing in the 100 backstroke.
“This meet has been my goal for as long as I’ve been swimming,” he said. “When I was younger, my mom told me about attending the meet and how amazing it was, so it’s exciting for my family, too. It was always something I wanted to do. Last summer I started to really see improvement in my times, and that really helped me focus on what to improve this season swimming at the college level.”
Johnson is originally from Uniontown, Pa., and is in a slightly different situation than the other three who competed collegiately in 2024. The 34-year-old went to Clarion University in Pa. and will swim the 50-yard freestyle race.
“When I qualified for the trials, I actually did CrossFit five days a week and only swam once, so most of my training was in the gym,” Johnson said. “(Former WVU coach) Vic Riggs offered for me to come and train with them, and I started to split my time between the gym and the pool. I’m only 34, but at the same time, I’m 34, so some of it was improvisation, listening to my body, and going with the flow.”
Johnson previously competed in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, where she swam three events, including the 50-yard freestyle.
“I actually retired from swimming after that but picked it up again around 2021,” she said. “I was still swimming as a form of recovery with CrossFit, and one week, they had a meet here in town, and I thought it would be fun to swim the 50 freestyle for fun. I ended up swimming a time that was faster than the time I swam in 2016, so from that point, I knew I could give it another shot.”
The 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials will take place June 15-23 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Each day has a preliminary session from 11 a.m. to 1 pm, with races to determine which athletes go to the semifinals and finals. The semi-finals and finals sessions take place from 8 p.m. to 10 pm, with an Olympian named to Team USA every night.
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