Courtesy of Connecticut College
Camel of the Edition is a series that seeks to highlight extraordinary Connecticut College athletes who have stood out from the herd due to their recent performances or as a leader on campus or on their team.
In what was a historic weekend for the men’s swimming and diving team, Julian Carlson ‘29 came away with not only his first appearance at the NCAA DIII Swimming and Diving Championships, but also his first All-American honors. After narrowly making the NCAA “B” cut time to qualify, the first-year walked away with 26th place in the 100 breast, 31st place in the 200 IM, and a massive 4th place finish in the 200 breaststroke. Carlson said the level of seriousness and camaraderie shared by the men’s team at Connecticut College helped push him to be his best when it mattered most. Training with some of the best in the division encourages him to step up his competitive game everyday—and do it for the good of the team. An ambitious and young talent in only his first season as a Camel, Carlson is just getting started.
Recently, The College Voice caught up with Carlson to hear about his standout performance at the NCAA Championship in Indianapolis, IN, the jump he made from high school to college, and just how much his environment helped him succeed this past weekend.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Julian Carlson, and I am from Brookline, Massachusetts. Currently, I’m interested in majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BCMB) and minoring possibly in computer science.
How did you start your swimming career? What was your experience like before college?
Growing up in elementary school, my mom would put me out in whatever sports she could just to keep me out of the house and stay active. And I basically did that all the way up until 7th grade when COVID hit. But then I had to choose in high school what I wanted to do as a sport. I ended up choosing swimming. I just swam on my town’s rec league team from when I was 10 years old and all the way through graduated high school. And then the high school team I joined my freshman year, but I wasn’t really that great of a swimmer. I also swam for Charles River Aquatics in between the high school seasons. So all through the summers, through the springs, and falls, I trained with them. I qualified for my first state meeting when I was a junior in high school. And I qualified for my first [high school] national meet in my senior year before I was recruited to go to Conn.
Explain the recruitment process and why you ended up choosing to come to Conn.
When Coach Marc [Benvenuti] reached out to me, I was super excited because it was the first time that a school had really shown a lot of interest in me. But I knew that I had so much potential in me still. So choosing to go to Conn gave me a lot of motivation to keep going. After my senior year ended in high school, I had made a huge jump in terms of national rankings. A lot of the guys at Conn reached out to me and were super excited to see me in the fall. When I was first starting to look at recruitment, I didn’t really know what to expect for myself. I knew DIII was probably going to be where I was going to be going. And since I’m from Massachusetts, the NESCAC schools are really popular for a lot of the people on my club team to actually go to those schools. On my visit to Conn, immediately the guys on the team made me feel super welcome and they wanted me there as soon as possible. Coach Marc was super welcoming and he was insistent on me coming here. What really made me want to come was Justin Finkel ‘25 came in not as some insane legendary legacy in high school—he was just like any of the other recruits that we might have coming in. But the coaches turned him into this national record holder, four-time national champion, swimmer of the year beast.
Qualifying for a national championship in your first year isn’t easy, but getting 4th in the nation and All-American is even harder. How did you make the jump from high school to college and from the beginning to the end of the season?
Part of it was leading up to coming here. I worked my butt off in high school, and just being recruited here and seeing how energetic Coach Marc was with getting me to join the team. That motivated me throughout the summer to train because I knew I really wanted to do well But I didn’t think about going to a national championship, let alone in my first year. But when I started training with the team, I opened my eyes more towards it. At the start of the year, I met with Carrick Shea ‘28 and captain Brendan Giuliano ‘27. We just talked about what the season would look like and what specific stuff that me and Carrick will be working on because we swim basically the same events. Just training with him and the focus that I’ve gotten from my coaches has boosted everything for me. Training alongside someone who’s insane will always push you to try to be better.
You and Shea are now the first two Conn teammates in history to receive All-American honors in the same event at the same national championship. What is the training like with him, a national champion in the 200 breast, and how do you push each other to improve?
Last summer, Carrick, who had just finished his freshman year, came back to his hometown of Grafton, MA to train with his club team. He came to one of the championship meets in New England and swam there with me in the same race, right next to each other. We talked about the race and about the upcoming season in a locker room a few times. He was only there for a day, so I only said a few things with him. But right then and there, he told me how excited he was to have me come to Conn. Before this year, he didn’t really have many people to train breaststroke with. Because of that, last year around championship season time, he wasn’t really championship focused. He told me how different his mentality was this year than last year and how excited he was to swim. Just from talking over the summer, a bunch of times over the phone, we just created a friendship without even really hanging out. There is always a level of competitiveness as always between two teammates. Coming in, he told our coach that he was a little nervous when I joined because he thought that I would take his spot in the 200. He told me that at the end of the season, and how it really helped him with the 200 competition aspect. But at the beginning, I was thinking that this dude is way too fast. He’s just way out of my league. But as we kept training together more and more, I saw a lot of similarities in how we swam and a lot of differences, which we both like pointed out to each other.
You placed 5th in the 200 breaststroke at the NESCAC Championship. A great performance, but still far off from 4th in the entire division. What changed going into the championships and how did your mindset shift for the big dance?
The energy that my teammates had on the deck at every meet this season was like I had experienced before. At every meet, there was something new that I learned about the team, whether it was some sort of cheer that we did or how we cheered on our teammates. Before the NESCAC championships, my highlight of the season was our win against Williams [College], which was the first time a NESCAC team had beaten Williams in a dual meet in a couple years, maybe a little more than a couple years, which was absolutely insane. That just made me realize what is possible. The motivation from Carrick and the motivation for my teammates to push for the NESCAC championship was intense. The training that we did, even through winter, was so freaking hard. We went down to Jacksonville this year for winter training which was very nice, but the training was brutal. There were days where we swam over 10,000 yards for doubles. But we still had each other. Leading up to NESCACs, my coaches were telling me that this is the most intense meet you’ll ever be at. But my coaches prepared me for that mentally, and I was taking care of what I ate and what I put inside my body, staying hydrated, and taking whatever supplements I needed. I even watched how much physical effort I put into everyday things. I was shocked with myself after my performance at NESCACs— it didn’t hit me that I made the national championship until I was walking through the doors to the pool in Indiana. But my coach told us not to beat ourselves up too hard no matter the result.The hard part, the hard work, was already over.
You’ve had so much success already as a first-year. Although it’s still early, what’s the plan for next season?
In the NCAA 200 breast prelims, I just wanted to see what I could do because I didn’t really know what I could do. And then getting into finals, I said that whatever I did wrong in prelims or whatever I have been working on over the season I’m going to execute all of that in the race. I’m really excited for next season already because I want to keep seeing how much better I can get. Over the summer I’m gonna go hit the gym, obviously. I’m going to go back to my club team that I kept swimming for all throughout high school. I’m going to get an opportunity to swim those events in a very low stress environment with my club team. I’m able to execute whatever I need without having the stress of performing well. Going into the next season, I’m super excited to see what I can do, and I think that I’m definitely capable of doing better than I can this year, especially if I train just as hard as I did this year. My coach knows what I’m capable of doing and he knows what I need to do in order to reach that.
Is there anything else you would like to add or people you would like to shout out?
I would like to shout out Evan Lyons ‘27 and Campbell Noel ‘29 who both went to NCAA’s with me. They both swim mostly distance, so nothing that I would train with them for. But the mentality that they both had training throughout the whole season motivates me to see that everyone else is working extremely hard for this. Everyone wants it. Evan is like a very well oiled machine. He really can go with no limit, and training around next to him is the biggest motivation boost you can get. He’s so motivated towards anything that he puts in front of him. It’s just kind of incredible how much he can actually do.
