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Top swimmers in 2026 class to swim for Gophers, others pick Notre Dame, Virginia

Top two girls swimmers Faith Lamah and Libbi McCarthy will compete for Minnesota while top boys Micah Davis and Nathan Carr are headed to Virginia.

The Minnesota Star Tribune
July 1, 2025 at 3:00PM
St. Cloud Tech junior boys swimmer Micah Davis, an Olympic hopeful, is committed to Virginia. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minnesota’s top high school swimmers in the Class of 2026 believe in sticking together.

Faith Lamah of St. Michael and Libbi McCarthy of Edina, the No. 1 and No. 2-ranked girls, respectively, are headed to the Gophers. Lamah, bypassing high school, competes for Edina Swim Club while McCarthy leads the Hornets squad.

McCarthy finished second in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle and swam a leg on the Hornets’ victorious 200 medley and 400 freestyle relay teams in the Class 2A state meet last year. She won the 50 freestyle in 2023. She will join her sister, Katie, as a member of the Gophers squad. Her brother, Tommy, just completed his senior season as a member of the men’s team.

Libbi McCarthy of Edina will join her two older siblings as a swimmer for the Gophers.

Two other girls ranked in the Top 10 — No. 6 Ellie Bina and No. 9 Caroline Mulrooney — are bound for Notre Dame. Bina, who swims for Mounds View, took fourth in the 500 freestyle and seventh in the 200 freestyle in the state meet. Mulrooney of Inver Grove Heights swims club for Riptide.

Third-ranked Catherine Pawlaski, another member of the Edina club team, is headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Pawlaski was the state champion in the 100 breaststroke as a freshman at Andover in 2022. She also finished fourth in the 200 individual medley that year.

Two other swimmers in the top five, fourth-ranked Julia Ogren and fifth-ranked Lydia Cameron, have committed to Louisville and Virginia Tech, respectively. Rochester John Marshall’s Ogren was third in the 100 butterfly and fourth in the 100 freestyle in the state meet this past season. Minnetonka’s Cameron is the reigning state champion in the 200 freestyle and was in the runner-up in the 500 freestyle.

The only two boys ranked in the 2026 top 10 to commit are No. 1 Micah Davis and No. 2 Nathan Carr. Both are headed to Virginia.

Davis, who swims for the combined program of St. Cloud Tech, St. Cloud Cathedral, Rocori and Becker, is the three-time defending state champion in the 100 butterfly and 200 freestyle. He is the state meet record holder in the butterfly with a time of 46.94 seconds.

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Wayzata’s Carr was the runner-up to Davis in the 100 butterfly and finished fourth in the 100 backstroke.

No swimmer in the top 10 in Minnesota’s Class of 2027 has committed. Monticello’s Adalynn Biegler and Wayzata’s Jerry Lou are the No. 1-ranked girls and boys swimmers, respectively, in that class.

Biegler, the All-Minnesota Girls Swimmer of the Year, set the state records in the 50 and 100 freestyles with times of 22.38 and 49.20 seconds in the 1A state meet in November. She is the three-time state champion in both events.

Lou finished fourth in the 100 butterfly and fifth in the 200 individual medley in the Class 2A state meet.

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about the writer

Ron Haggstrom

Prep Sports Reporter

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