U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships Wraps Up In Orlando

ORLANDO, Fla. — The last swim meet of the year for para swimming wrapped up on Sunday night at the Rosen Aquatics & Fitness Center in Florida. 

The U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships, presented by Toyota, spanned three days and saw 33 gold medals handed out and 13 broken records. Not only did it give athletes a chance to get in more time in the pool before the upcoming Paralympic year, but it enabled them to up their rankings before the important 2024 U.S. Paralympic Team Trials — Swimming, taking place in June in Minneapolis.

Swimmer of the meet went to Paralympic hopeful Noah Jaffe, who racked up 7,913 points over the course of his three-day swims. 

“Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it went,” the 20-year-old said. “Getting athlete of the meet was unexpected, so it was really cool to get that.”

Another nice surprise was Chloe Cederholm (who recently took silver at the Parapan American Games Santiago 2023 in the 100m backstroke and bronze in the 200m IM). The newly turned 13-year-old went into the meet hoping to just “see what I could work on for the future,” but that future included a top podium finish in the 200m backstroke S1-S14, setting an American record in the process.

“After Parapans, I just wanted to see where I was at for trials coming up in June and so far, I’ve been pretty close to my best times,” she said. Her next goal is to “do really well at Trials and maybe I can have a chance to go to Paris. That’s my biggest hope.”

Also finishing strong on the last night of competition was Paralympic silver medalist David Abrahams, who earned the gold in the men’s 200 IM SM5-14. “I decided to get out there and put everything I had into it, and it ended up working out,” he said. 

His swim in the 400m free on day one saw him drop about 10 seconds from his best time. “That was pretty cool,” Abrahams shared, “but it definitely hurt a lot.” He dropped time again on day two, cutting more than a second off his time from worlds last year in the men’s 100m breaststroke SB4-9, 11-14.

U.S. Paralympics Swimming director Erin Popovich said the three-day competition gave her a lot of hope for the future of the sport. 

“I’m really happy with the swims that we’ve seen,” she said. “From the first day, we’ve had a number of new swimmers who are having stellar swims. This is the time that we start seeing those changes from swimmers that we’ve been following for a couple of years to breakout performances. The next six months leading into trials will be exciting.”

The meet closed out a busy year leading up to the Paralympic Games Paris 2024 in August. Most of the swimmers in attendance had competed in the 2023 Para Swimming World Championships or the Parapan Games, for many their first international competition. 

Their next big competition will be trials in June, so be sure to follow along as they make their way to Paris. 

Lisa Costantini has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than a decade, including for the International Olympic Committee. She is a freelance writer who has contributed to TeamUSA.com since 2011.