PATH TO PARIS: Olympics the destination for education student from USask

Thirty-two years after her mother Mary competed for Canada in diving in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Sydney will be following in her footsteps in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

“My Olympic dream started when I was probably four years old, so it really has been a long time coming,” said the 21-year-old University of Saskatchewan (USask) College of Education student and member of Canada’s national artistic swimming team. “I remember when I was young and I saw my mom’s Olympic tattoo on her leg and I asked her what does that mean? And she told me about the Olympics and I said, ‘OK, I want to do that!’ So definitely this is a dream come true to go to the Olympics and it is also really special because my mom is also going there as a diving coach. So we are going to be able to experience it together, which is really cool.”

Carroll comes from a family of accomplished athletes, drawing inspiration and dedication from one another. Her mother Mary was a 14-time senior national diving champion and a gold medal winner in the Commonwealth Games, and now serves as a national team coach who will guide her Saskatoon Diving Club standouts Rylan Wiens and Margo Erlam – both fellow USask students – at the Paris Olympics.

Carroll’s father Steve was also a gold-medal winning diver at the 1985 Canada Summer Games and has been coaching ever since, and will be in France as a fan following her daughter and his club’s two Saskatoon divers. Meanwhile, Carroll’s younger brother Jordan – who will be studying engineering at USask this fall – also won a gold medal at the 2023 Canada Games in Charlottetown, winning Saskatchewan’s first ever gold on the pommel horse in artistic gymnastics.

Carroll also got her start in gymnastics, but tagging along with her parents to the pool soon changed her focus.

“When I didn’t have gymnastics training I went to the pool with them because both of them coached diving, but I wanted to do something different,” she said. “So I saw the artistic swimmers training one day and I said, ‘Whoa, that’s cool, they are throwing people up in the air and they’re doing flips.’ And I told my parents that I wanted to try that, so I did. It was kind of the perfect mix between gymnastics and swimming and dance and everything all in the water and I just fell in love with it.”

Carroll started in the sport at the age of 11 and made the junior national team in 2020 and the senior team in 2021, competing in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 world aquatics championships and helping Canada earn a bronze medal in the 2023 Pan-Am Games in Santiago, Chile. This year, she helped Canada qualify for the Paris Olympics and will officially serve as a travelling alternate for the artistic swimming team, entering the pool when one of her teammates can’t compete due to illness or injury.

“Hearing that I officially made the group of nine that are going to the Olympics was really exciting,” said Carroll. “There are nine girls on the team but only eight compete. So I am with the team, I am in the Athletes Village, and I am training in the pool every day, but just eight girls compete in each rotation. So I have to make sure that I know all of the positions in case I am needed, if they are sick or injured or whatever, I am there to do whichever rotation. So it is definitely a different role that I play because instead of working on an exact set of movements, I have to prepare for all of them.”

With the national team based out of Montreal for much of the year, Carroll spends a lot of time away from home, and away from campus, taking many of her second-year education courses remotely.

“Definitely it is a challenge, but some of my professors have been a big help since a lot of my classes are remote because of the centralized training in Montreal, and a lot of time I am away,” she said. “So a lot of my classes over the last year have been online, and being able to work that out with the advisors has been really helpful to make sure that I am on the right track in classes, while also preparing for the Olympics.”

Carroll is scheduled to fly to Paris with Team Canada on Wednesday, July 24, and take part in the opening ceremonies on Friday, July 26.

“I am so excited,” said Carroll. “The opening ceremonies are supposed to be on the Seine, going down the river, so it should be a pretty special once-in-a-lifetime moment for sure.”

Carroll’s Canadian team competes in the artistic swimming team technical, free and acrobatic routines on August 5-7. For Carroll, it is the culmination of years of dedication, juggling classes and competitions, to reach the pinnacle of sport in her first Olympic Games.

“I remember when I was younger, I made so many posters with the Olympic rings and all the athletes that I remember watching on TV,” said Carroll. “And now, to think that I am one of them and going to be there representing Canada, it doesn’t feel real yet. It is going to be a dream come true.”