United States Swimmers and Coaches Not Sweating Imperfect Pan Pacs
No international swim team selected one year in advance will be perfect. Inevitably, swimmers left off the team will drop massive swaths of time during the gap while others will struggle to replicate their form 12 months down the line. Those scenarios played out for the United States at the Pan Pacific Championships.
Anna Moesch, a relay alternate at last year’s World Championships, twice broke the American record in the 100 freestyle this year and swam the top time by any U.S. woman in the 200 free. Her presence at Pan Pacs could have resulted in improved relay performances. Backstroker Isabelle Stadden and breaststrokers Josh Bey and Gabe Nunziata all recorded times at U.S. Nationals that would have earned podium finishes at Pan Pacs, and up-and-coming mid-distance swimmers Luka Mijatovic and Ryan Erisman also had to watch from the sidelines.
At the same time, countries such as Australia performed well at Pan Pacs despite swimming three high-stakes meets in as many months, with the country’s selection meet followed by the Commonwealth Games before the trip to California.
USA Swimming national team director Greg Meehan — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Still, USA Swimming national team director Greg Meehan believes his organization made the right choice long-term. Punting on ideal results this year was worth giving swimmers a break from the pressures of a qualification meet and a chance for increased training before returning to the selection meet cadence for the 2027 World Championships and 2028 Olympics.
“We’ve been in a bit of a meat grinder since COVID. Selection meets in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. We needed a longer summer to have a bigger training block, and we needed to be able to take the pressure off a little bit in terms of the preparation,” Meehan said. “You know any time that you select a team a year in advance, the team that’s actually at the meet, you’re going to have a little bit of all over the place in terms of some really great (swims) and some (swimmers) maybe a little bit disappointed.”
In previous normal-length quads, USA Swimming has based its Worlds team in the pre-Olympic year on times from the previous year, and per Meehan, “we just didn’t want to do that.” Meehan recalled swimmers rebounding from poor performances at the 2015 and 2019 World Championships to post strong performances at Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, respectively.
A solid chunk of this year’s Pan Pacs team will have the chance to make similar rebounds next year, having struggled to live up to the times they posted in qualifying last year. Still, some swimmers sought to find positive takeaways from lackluster results as they build toward more consequential competitions to be held over the next two summers. One rough competition, even at the year’s biggest meet, did not negate all progress.
The accomplished swimmers who left Irvine wishing for better included Torri Huske, the Olympic champion in the 100 butterfly and last year’s top-ranked swimmer in the world in the 100 freestyle. Huske swam in only one championship final last week, placing fourth in the 100 fly, while being relegated to the consolation heat in her other three events. Her lone medal came as part of a victorious U.S. women’s squad in the 400 free relay.
“We’re definitely gonna have to re-evaluate some things after this meet for me, just because the way it’s been going has not been what I had hoped,” Huske said. “This spring was a really tough quarter for me for school, so it would have been really difficult for me to have a trials. But I also think that not racing as much kind of hurt me as well. So I was kind of just stuck in this limbo. I’m going to talk to my coach, and we’re going to figure something out.”
Several of the men training under coach Bob Bowman at the University of Texas, who were among those recording slower times than in 2025, thought back to the stretch of challenging aerobic-based training they experienced in the spring. They believe they can take advantage of that block of work in future seasons, even if the effects have not yet carried over to their race performances.
Rex Maurer — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
“We had the opportunity to go to the (Olympic Training Center) for an entire month in June. In a trials year, you really wouldn’t be able to have that opportunity because of school, and then after the trials meet, you have to get ready and go to the staging camp,” Rex Maurer said. “My performance at this meet has not been what I had wished for. That training didn’t just disappear. I know the work I put in, and I know I’ll see the benefits eventually.”
Breaststroker Campbell McKean, relegated to B finals after his first season under Bowman’s tutelage, echoed that message. “This is a good setup for L.A.,” he said. “This is probably our last continuous training block before L.A. with all the college meets, and then trials next year before Worlds, and then there’s the Olympic year after that, which will probably be pretty busy. So I think it’s definitely beneficial.”
Big picture, Pan Pacs were the ultimate goal for exactly zero of the swimmers competing in Irvine, with competitions of higher prestige on the horizon. Even Katie Ledecky shrugged off a mediocre (by her standards) swim in the 1500 free. “It was OK,” she said. “I don’t want to read too much into the final time. I know I have more in me.”
Those swimmers who thrived this year would trade their Pan Pacs medals for similar honors at the World Championships or Olympics, and none of the American team will make spur-of-the-moment decisions about their careers as a reaction to what happened in Southern California. Instead, they take stock of what worked and what didn’t, and then they move forward.
“With (coach) Todd (DeSorbo) and my sports psych, they say that this year is the perfect year to test new things out,” Claire Curzan said after winning silver in the 200 backstroke. “We’re two years out, so still plenty of time to adjust, and also whatever happens this year has literally no effect on what happens in 2028. So just every race is information, and I’ve been pretty pleased with some things and wanting to work on some other things.”
