Ann Arbor, Mich., was announced as the “best swim city in America” for the second year in a row by USA Swimming and Speedo USA this year. The search for the top swim cities only began in 2014, therefore Ann Arbor has been the only city to ever be awarded with this title. Some of the factors that determined the rankings of swim cities were the percentage of swimmers, swim clubs, amount of pools and national-level swimmers in the city.

“All of the high school teams, the club teams and even the WISC teams [are what makes Ann Arbor #1]” said Andrea Stanczak, Huron women’s swimming head coach and men’s assistant coach. “It pulls in some of those kids that wouldn’t necessarily swim and they like it, so they join the high school team.”

WISC (Washtenaw Interclub Swimming Conference) is a swim league with nearly 20 teams from the Ann Arbor area that participate every summer. Ann Arbor high school swim coaches argue that WISC is the reason that swimming is so big in the area.

“Whether you want to swim at Huron Valley, or swim at Vets Park or at Forestbrooke—wherever you live, whatever you’ve got going on in the summer, there’s a spot for you to swim and that’s what I think makes it such a big part of this community,” said Maureen “Mojo” Isaac, Skyline women’s swimming head coach.

Swimmers from various high schools in the Ann Arbor area are united during the summer at Fuller Pool, through a program that Huron science teacher, Jenni Wilkening, and Mojo inherited from retired Pioneer swim coach, Denny Hill. The practices start early in the morning and the program runs concurrent with the WISC season, so that high schoolers have the option to swim for one of the WISC teams and compete at the conference meet after the end of the program.

“I love having that contact and interaction with high schoolers from all over southeast Michigan and I feel really blessed to coach the program that Hill started,” Mojo said. “That’s a great service that he gave to this community for a really long time and I love that I get to keep it going.”

WISC isn’t the only organization that is bringing kids into the world of competitive swimming. “The university has a lot to do with it… their camps bring in between five and seven hundred kids a year,” said Stefanie Kerska, Pioneer women’s and men’s swimming head coach.

The University of Michigan is known to attract many olympic swimmers, with the UM Swim Camp drawing younger swimmers to Ann Arbor each year.

In the future, Ann Arbor high school coaches want to see another large swim facility in the city. Even though there are a fair amount of high school, public, private and college pools in the area, coaches still feel like they have limited working space.

“As many summer pools as we have, there are not a lot of indoor pools, and we live in Michigan, after all,” Kerska said. Another indoor pool would be an ideal place for high school swimmers to train during their off-season.

Ann Arbor swimmers represented their city well at Division 1 states this year, with Skyline placing 1st out of nearly 50 of the best teams in the state, stripping Saline of their previous title. Pioneer placed 14th and Huron placed 20th, continuing Ann Arbor’s strong tradition of swimming.