The deepest squad in the American delegation to Lima isn’t on the court or the track. It’s in the pool. Team USA is sending 44 swimmers to the 2026 FISU America Games, running July 20 through August 1 in Lima, Peru, pulled from 17 different college programs across every corner of the country.
Purdue Owns the Pool
No school placed more swimmers on the roster than Purdue. The Boilermakers lead the nation with eight individual selections: Keira Kask, Kate Mouser, Lara Phipps, and Adele Sands from the women’s swimming & diving program, and Maxwell Blume, Biko Hooper-Haviland, Evan Mackesy, and Blake Rowe from the men’s side.
That’s nearly a fifth of the entire U.S. swim delegation coming out of West Lafayette, and a serious statement about where the program stands in the Big Ten swimming pecking order. It also sets up two weeks of international showcase racing for Boilermaker fans.
The Multi-Athlete Programs
Three other schools placed multiple swimmers:
- Oakland sends a three-athlete Horizon League contingent: backstroker Lydia Soldatke from the women’s program, with butterfly/IM specialist Max Haney and breaststroker Alexander Lakin repping the men’s side.
- BYU also sends three: Max Kleinman and Darwin Anderson from the men’s program, and Lucy Warnick from the women’s side, a nice Big 12 swimming counterweight to Purdue’s Big Ten haul.
- FGCU places two: Izzy Ackley and Aislyn Barnett.
The Solo Acts
The rest of the roster reads like a cross section of American college swimming, from power conferences to smaller programs and everything in between:
- Levi Sandidge (Kentucky)
- Emily Lundgren (Washington State)
- Chloe Diner (Illinois)
- Sean Setzer (North Carolina)
- Lauren McNamara (Marshall), butterfly
- Faith Larsen (Northern Iowa), freestyle and butterfly
- Ava Portello (Rice)
- Leyton Roe (Florida Atlantic)
- Nien Levy (Queens)
- Ryley Clark (Fresno State)
- Erin Dawson (Colorado State)
- Rachel Dildine (Iowa)
Seventeen schools on one national team. That is one of the widest program footprints anywhere in the U.S. delegation.
Why This Meet Matters
The FISU America Games are a continental championship for university athletes, drawing competitors from 18 countries across North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean, the largest field in the event’s four editions. For college swimmers, it’s international racing experience, a Team USA cap, and a results line that travels: times posted in Lima follow these athletes into next season’s rankings conversations.
The NIL Angle: Swimmers Are the Most Overlooked Athletes in College Sports
Swimming might be the sport where fan support matters most in the college landscape. No TV deals trickle down to these athletes, training volume is brutal, and the costs of travel, gear, and treatment stack up all year. Yet swimmers deliver some of the most loyal, engaged fan communities in Olympic sports, and a Team USA cap is exactly the kind of moment that turns a conference standout into a household name in their sport.
For Purdue fans especially, this is the window: eight Boilermakers wearing the flag at once doesn’t happen every summer. Back the men’s and women’s squads now. The fans who fuel these athletes today are the ones who saw it coming.
Racing runs through the Games’ window in Lima. We’ll have a medal recap when the U.S. squad comes home.
