This all-girls high school has more swimming medals than most countries

NANTERRE, France — Swimmers from 189 countries are in the Paris Olympics pool competing for medals. The official medals table doesn’t show this, but a small all-girls Catholic school from Bethesda, Md., has bagged more hardware than all but seven of them. If Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart was a properly recognized delegation, it would find itself ahead of Germany, Ireland, South Africa, Japan, Switzerland and so many others.

The Republic of Stone Ridge, of course, is led by Katie Ledecky, who is responsible for three of the four Stone Ridge medals, one of each color. The fourth, a silver, was won by 19-year-old Erin Gemmell. (Because it was the same relay medal as Ledecky’s, the official Olympic number-crunchers wouldn’t count it separately, but no one at Stone Ridge is going to discount it one bit.)

The school nearly picked up a fifth Friday night, when 21-year-old Phoebe Bacon finished the women’s 200-meter backstroke in fourth place, an agonizing 0.04 seconds away from a bronze.

“It’s pretty incredible,” said Ledecky, who is a favorite to reach the medals podium one last time, racing Saturday in the women’s 800 freestyle. “… Just really proud of those two, proud to represent Stone Ridge, everyone back home.”

It’s normal for entire states or universities to boast about their number of Olympians. But it’s rare for so many from the same grade school to reach the sport’s biggest stage. Nearly 15 percent of the U.S. women’s team was once a Stone Ridge Gator, in fact.

“Obviously, we started with just one Olympic athlete. Katie, of course, had just finished her freshman year when she went to London,” said Catherine Karrels, the Stone Ridge head of school, referring to the 2012 Summer Games. “The last Olympics, we had two with Phoebe there. And now three. The energy and the excitement in our community just keeps growing and growing.”

Ledecky graduated from Stone Ridge in 2015, five years before Bacon and eight before Gemmell. But the trio have been close for many years.

“There’s an age difference, but I’ve known them both since they were very, very young,” Ledecky said. “… Just to see them grow up before my eyes all the way to the Olympics is pretty crazy.”

When Bacon was about 4 years old, she was assigned a school “buddy” at Little Flower School in Bethesda: a responsible fourth-grader named Katie Ledecky. And Gemmell is the daughter of Ledecky’s former coach, Bruce. When she was 8 years old, she dressed up as Ledecky for Halloween, complete with swim cap and goggles. And when she was 13, she walked with Ledecky to the mound of Nationals Park for a Swimming Night promotion, where Ledecky let the younger swimmer throw out the first pitch.

“Everyone knows how long I’ve looked up to Katie,” Gemmell said. “It’s kind of easy to forget sometimes that she’s as good as she is because she’s so humble. She’s just a great teammate. And then she goes out there and crushes it over and over again.”

Understanding how one school with a high school student body of less than 400 could produce three Olympians requires unraveling a spiderweb of connections, good fortune and better coaching.

Ledecky was originally coached by Yuri Suguiyama at Nation’s Capital. When Suguiyama left, Bruce Gemmell was hired to lead the club and relocated his family to the Washington area. Bacon swam for Nation’s Capital, too, and eventually enrolled at Wisconsin, where Suguiyama is now the head coach.

The only person to coach all is three is Bob Walker, the Stone Ridge swim coach who worked closely with the club coaches during the school swim season.

“They’re different,” Walker said of the three Olympians, “but they’re all humble, all great, all supportive of each other and the school and their classmates. They came to our school as little girls and left as fine ladies and just special people.”

All of the girls stop by the school when they’re in town, sometimes to visit the pool, always to visit former teachers and students.

“Katie doesn’t make a big deal about it,” said Karrels, the head of school. “She’s happy to wander the hallways or pop in the classrooms to say hi.”

Karrels has been in Paris all week, seated inside Paris La Défense Arena for nearly all of the races featuring the Stone Ridge trio. Sitting in Section 109 on Friday, she proudly wore a T-shirt that featured the Eiffel Tower alongside the names Bacon, Gemmell and Ledecky.

“It doesn’t get better than seeing a bunch of your alumna on the world stage,” she said. “It’s pretty darn exciting.”

The school sold about 2,000 of the T-shirts and held a pep rally last month for about 500 people. Ledecky, Bacon and Gemmell were at a U.S. team training camp in Croatia at the time. They got their hands on the T-shirts and recorded a special video that was played at the pep rally. Many of the shirts have been spotted in the stands here, and all the swimmers say they’ve been hearing all week from their Stone Ridge family via text, calls and social media.

The three have given their friends back home something to celebrate nearly every day of the Paris meet. Ledecky set an Olympic record in the 1,500-meter race, and with her 13th career medal she became the most decorated female Olympian ever. After Ledecky raced third in the 4x200 relay Thursday, Gemmell was entrusted with the anchor leg, holding strong over 200 meters to secure the silver. And Bacon posted the fastest semifinal time in the women’s 200 backstroke that same night, before Friday’s heartbreaking final.

Bacon was in third place at the final turn, but Canada’s Kylie Masse caught her in the final few meters, barely out-touching Bacon at the wall.

“I prepared as well as I possibly could have,” Bacon said after. “Just missed that podium. But you know, just kind of makes me more hungry for next time around.”

Stone Ridge will surely be ready, too, as all three of the former Gators have the Los Angeles Games - and more Olympic medals - in their sights.

“It’s just wild getting to do this with my schoolmates,” Gemmell said.