Most Olympians will go their whole lives without approaching Katie Ledecky’s feats. But at Stone Ridge, Ledecky’s alma mater in Bethesda, a high school junior already has surpassed her — at least in one event.
In becoming the face of a team that arguably has achieved more than the Gators did during Ledecky’s tenure from 2011 to 2015, Erin Gemmell swam the 100-yard freestyle faster than anyone in school history, including the seven-time Olympic gold medalist.
Building on the momentum from the Ledecky era at the private, all-girls school, Stone Ridge has become a dominant regional power, having won the Independent School League title in January and seeking more at Saturday’s Washington Metropolitan Prep School Swim Dive League championships at the University of Maryland.
So how did a school with an enrollment under 1,000 and a restriction against recruiting for athletics enter the national conversation?
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“I think having Katie has made a big difference in the support that Stone Ridge has for swimming since it isn’t necessarily the biggest sport like lacrosse or basketball is,” Gemmell said. “Katie is a motivator.”
Gemmell moved from Delaware to D.C. in 2012 so that her father could coach Ledecky at Nation’s Capital Swim Club (NCAP). Her brother, Andrew, swam in the Olympics in London that year, and she was in the pool before she even could form complete sentences. She is the latest in a line of elite swimmers who have attended Stone Ridge after Ledecky.
Even in the D.C. area’s frenetic youth-swimming culture, Stone Ridge’s track record has been unparalleled. Just look at its top times.
“There’s 12 events in high school swimming, eight of which are individual events,” Stone Ridge Coach Bob Walker begins before delivering the data — that Ledecky holds the fastest times in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle while fellow former Gator Phoebe Bacon reigns in the 100 backstroke. “ … So here’s Stone Ridge sitting with three of the eight fastest high school times ever.”
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Slowly, Ledecky and Bacon’s success became a powerful word-of-mouth pull that spread among the area’s young swimmers and their parents and helped bring kids to the program. At NCAP, where many of the region’s top swimmers compete, they also talk, and they know how Stone Ridge administrators, teachers and coaches assist students through hectic swim schedules that include out-of-state meets and more than 15 hours of practice each week, year-round.
Unlike in other sports that emphasize team chemistry, many elite high school swim teams allow their athletes to train almost exclusively with their club teams because schedules conflict. That has become true at Stone Ridge, too.
The girls who swim at NCAP leave school 15 minutes early every day, and for big meets they can miss school entirely. Junior Eleanor Sun, Gemmell’s teammate at Stone Ridge and NCAP, missed roughly 10 days last semester for swimming purposes. Her academic and aquatic profile remained strong. She’s committed to swimming at Princeton in two years.
Even though the school harbors standout swimmers, it doesn’t necessarily create them.
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“There’s no: ‘You come to Stone Ridge and all of a sudden you’re an Olympic champion,’ ” Walker said. “That’s not how swimming or any sport works. We’re just a three-month program.”
But Walker and the program’s support have given the girls the requisite time and motivation, they say. It feels as if that is culminating now. Take the ISL championships: In the eight years following Ledecky’s first meet at the school, the Gators won just one ISL title. They now have captured back-to-back trophies, with depth they only dreamed of during earlier years.
Ledecky remains close with the school, which provides a motivational boost. This past winter, she visited kids in the lower, middle and upper schools. She also stays in contact with the swimming program, occasionally watching the live streams of its meets.
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“All the kids having mouths’ wide open, eyes wide open, staring right up there at this person who did exactly what they did,” Walker said. “She still looks like a student. She’s still young enough to say, ‘Yes, I did that, too.’ ”
“She’s the best swimmer in the world, and she’s just over here wishing us luck at our meet on some random Friday,” Gemmell said. “That’s kind of insane.”
While Gemmell wouldn’t call herself the next Ledecky or Bacon — after all, Ledecky was an Olympic gold medalist before her sophomore year at the school, while Bacon collected two Pan American gold medals by the time she graduated — her résumé makes her one of the best and busiest swimmers in the country.
Gemmell is committed to swim at Texas in two years. She finished ninth in the 200-meter freestyle at the Olympic trials last June and recently set two school benchmarks at the ISL championship — in the 50 free (22.74 seconds), a record previously held by Bacon, and in the 100 free (48.97), which bested Ledecky’s time from the first 100 yards of her U.S. high school record race in the 200 free.
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Just the presence of the name Ledecky can inspire the Gators.
“When we’re at meets,” junior Lauren Tucker said, “and I look up at the board and I see their names, I see Katie Ledecky’s name on the record board; it just motivates me — and I’m sure the rest of the team — to continue the legacy that they left behind.”
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