10 Athletes To Watch At This Weekend’s Para Swimming National Championships

A year ago, Olivia Chambers was preparing for her first U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships.

She was a college freshman and still relatively new to Para swimming, having been declared legally blind during the spring of her senior year of high school. Her three-medal performance at nationals — including two titles — earned her the title of swimmer of the meet, and this summer she went on to win an astounding six medals at her debut at the world championships.

This weekend, Chambers joins with the nation’s other top swimmers for the final U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships before next summer’s Paralympic Games Paris 2024. Perennial elite contenders including Jessica Long and McKenzie Coan will be racing alongside swimmers who are just like Chambers was last year, hoping to make a big impact and gain valuable racing experience as they head into the final stretch before the 2024 U.S. Paralympic Team Trials.

Many are already coming off impressive performances this summer and fall. Some of the strongest candidates for Paris 2024 competed in August at the world championships in Manchester, England, and many up-and-comers as well as veterans returning to competition squared off at the 2023 Parapan American Games last month in Santiago, Chile. 

Racing gets underway on Friday and continues through Sunday in Orlando, Florida. Here are 10 athletes to watch.

Chambers, 20, won national titles in both the 400-meter freestyle and the 200-meter individual medley last year, and she’ll look to defend both as well as race in the 1,500-meter freestyle and 100-meter breaststroke. This summer at the world championships the native of Little Rock, Arkansas, proved herself a highly versatile swimmer with two silver and four bronze medals across three freestyle events, one butterfly, one breaststroke and one individual medley. 

Like Chambers, Jaffe made his world championship debut this summer and left Manchester a breakout star. He earned four medals at that meet, second only to Chambers. The 20-year-old from Carlsbad, California swam a personal-best in the men’s 400-meter freestyle in his very first race to earn bronze, and later on won his first world title and set an American record in the men’s 100-meter freestyle. 

At this stage, little can be said about Long that hasn’t been said before. The Baltimore native is one of the greatest Paralympic swimmers of all time, with five Games and 29 medals on her resume. This summer in Manchester she won her 36th and 37th world titles in the women’s 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter individual medley, respectively, beating the field by nearly four seconds in the latter. She’s swimming in seven events this weekend, and no doubt she’ll have all eyes on her in every one. 

Coan is another mainstay on the Team USA roster with three Paralympics and six medals — four gold — under her belt. She didn’t have an easy summer; an illness led to Bell’s palsy, which caused temporary facial paralysis in the weeks before the world championships. The inability to close one of her eyes and the side of her mouth or breathe out of one nostril impacted her swimming to the extent that she had to withdraw from worlds, but the veteran swimmer from Clarkesville, Georgia, recovered in time for the Parapan Ams and won silver in the 100-backstroke and bronze in the 400-meter freestyle. 

Abrahams made his Paralympic debut in Tokyo, but battled through a torn labrum in his hip not long after. He was heartened by a bronze medal showing in the 100-meter breaststroke race this summer, however, and will be racing in that as well as three other events in his category for visually impaired athletes. This is likely the last national championships for the Harvard senior from Havertown, Pennsylvania, who has a job lined up as a quantitative researcher with an investment management company following next summer’s Paralympics. 

Stickney won her first national title in the 400-meter freestyle event in 2018, just half a year after having her left leg amputated below the knee. Now a double-amputee because of a rare cardiovascular disease that limits blood flow, Stickney won gold at the Paralympics in 2021 and world championships in 2022 in the 400-meter freestyle S8. She was reclassified this year as an S7 — in Paralympics, the lower the number the greater the impairment — but won her third consecutive major international title in her signature race. This weekend the Cary, North Carolina, native is slated to race in 100-meter freestyle and 1,500-meter freestyle. 

A year ago, Winnett was thrilled to make the national “C” team and win a U.S. bronze medal in the 100-meter freestyle, five years after breaking her back. This summer she became the most decorated swimmer on Team USA at the Parapan American Games with a total of seven medals, including gold in the 100-meter backstroke, the 200-meter individual medley and the 100-meter butterfly, in which she set a Parapan Am Games record. The Hershey, Pennsylvania, native will be looking to continue her upward trajectory this weekend.  

Salt Lake City native Cederholm definitely qualifies as a young up-and-comer. She turned 13 years old while in Santiago competing for Team USA and was among the three youngest athletes at the entire event. Her best birthday presents? Silver in the 100-meter backstroke and bronze in the 200-meter individual medley.

Wilkerson has been moving steadily up the ranks over the past few years, and competed in his first national championships in 2021. Blind since birth, the 17-year-old from Wake Forest, North Carolina, competed in this fall’s Parapan American Games, his biggest meet to date, and came home with silver in the 100-meter backstroke and bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke. 

A sophomore student-athlete at Northern Iowa, Prochaska went to the Parapan American Games in 2019 and missed the podium in the 100-meter butterfly, but not this year. She earned the gold medal to go along with gold in the 200-meter individual medley, and also took silver in the women’s 100-meter breaststroke and silver in the women’s 400-meter freestyle.