Carmel swimming sibling duo wins five gold medals at first international meet for both

Gold-medal standings in swimming’s Junior Pan Pacific Championships looked like this:

19, Team USA.

8, Japan and Australia (tie).

5, Team Shackell.

Carmel siblings Alex, 15, and Aaron Shackell, 17, were part of an overpowering American team at Waipahu, Hawaii. It was the first international meet for both.

“I like the quote, ‘It’s not about the times you go, it’s about the times you have,’“ Alex told USA Swimming. “So it has been pretty much the best week of my life.”

More:Carmel's latest swimming phenom has been counting down days to Paris 2024 since she was 8

Alex, a sophomore at Carmel High School, finished Saturday night with four golds and a bronze.

She won the girls 100-meter butterfly Friday in 58.58 seconds. Later that night, she swam a 54.48 anchor for a team setting a meet record of 3:37.99 in the 400 freestyle relay.

Alex has three junior national titles in the 100 fly since August 2021, and she set a 100-yard high school state record in February.

“I’d say that is my best event and I had a streak going,” she said, “so I wanted to end it off well for the season.”

She was third in the 200 butterfly and swam legs on gold-winning teams in the 400-meter mixed and medley relays. She swam a 58.45 butterfly leg in the latter Saturday for a second meet record (4:02.14).

Aaron set a Junior Pan Pacs record of 1:55.81 for gold Wednesday in the 200 butterfly, breaking the mark of 1:55.92 set by Andrew Seliskar in 2014. Aaron climbed to No. 4 on the all-time list for boys 17-18, holding off 15-year-old Thomas Heilman of Crozet, Va.

“I think this has been a really big season for me,” Aaron Shackell said. “I started out at about 2:01 and have really been building at every meet and have been getting better. I think that was a good way to top it off. To race Thomas and to drop from juniors to now, it is really cool to do it together since we’ve been next to each other the whole way.”

Heilman set a Junior Pan Pacs record of 51.98 to win the 100 fly, becoming the first in the 15-16 age group to break 52 seconds.

USA Swimming sent a team to this meet rather than the upcoming World Junior Championships, which was delayed by the pandemic. Junior Pan Pacs have been a springboard for other Carmel swimmers.

Amy Bilquist won five medals, four of them gold, at Hawaii in 2014. She came within .07 of making it to the 2016 Olympics. Carmel’s first Olympic swimmer, Drew Kibler, won five golds at Suva, Fiji, in 2018.

Contact IndyStar reporter David Woods at david.woods@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Carmel swimmers Alex and Aaron Shackell win 5 golds at Junior Pan Pacs