For champion swimmer Katie Ledecky, one of the best things about winning Olympic medals is sharing them.
And after returning from the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris with two gold medals, a bronze and a silver medal, she did just that, visiting her alma mater, Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland, to show students her medals and to talk about her Olympic experiences. She also stopped by her parish, the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda.
Addressing Stone Ridge Middle School students at the school’s Cokie Boggs Roberts Theater during an Oct. 22 visit to the school, Ledecky said, “My favorite thing has been being able to do things like this, and being able to share these medals with my community and with people. I call it the power of the gold medal, the way showing a gold medal to someone can light up their face or make them smile.”
Ledecky described what it was like after winning her first gold medal in swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, when she was 15 and a rising sophomore at Stone Ridge. She returned home and showed her medal to wounded warriors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, and she also visited the National Children’s Hospital in Washington, and she remembered putting a medal around a child’s neck there and seeing that child’s face light up.
“That’s probably my favorite part about winning the medals, and that’s probably what really inspires me the most, to try to win those medals and to be able to share them,” the Olympian said.
Ledecky, who wore her four latest Olympic medals around her neck as she addressed the Stone Ridge students, added, “That’s definitely something that motivates me to continue to try to earn these medals for our country, just being able to bring them back and share them with all these people, that brings me a lot of joy… To me, these medals are not just mine. They’re everyone’s, everyone that has supported me, everyone that has driven me to practice, pushed me in practice, taught me in school, supported me in all my goals, and even just everyone at home watching on TV and yelling at their TV.”
It was a banner year and a banner week for the swimmer. In May at the White House, President Joe Biden presented Ledecky with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. This summer before the Olympics, her best-selling memoir, “Just Add Water,” was published by Simon & Schuster.
Then in Paris while swimming in her fourth consecutive Summer Olympics, Ledecky won her 14th Olympic medal, adding two more gold medals to her record-setting total of nine gold medals, and she became the most decorated U.S. female Olympian in history. At the Paris Olympics, Ledecky won gold medals in her signature races – the women’s 800-meter and 1500-meter freestyle events – and she won a silver medal in the 4x200 meter freestyle relay and a bronze in the 400-meter women’s freestyle race.
And five days before speaking to Stone Ridge students, Ledecky was honored at a ceremony on campus, where members of the Montgomery County Council issued a proclamation naming Oct. 17 as “Katie Ledecky Day,” and an honorary road marker, “Katie Ledecky Lane” was unveiled for a roadway along the school.
Speaking to students during Ledecky’s visit to Stone Ridge, Catherine Ronan Karrels – the Head of School there – said of the new road sign, “Now every day when we drive to school, we will be able to see that and be inspired by her as we come and go about our day.”
As she introduced the Olympic athlete to the students, Karrels encouraged them to “give a warm welcome to a fellow Stone Ridge girl, class of 2015, Katie Ledecky!”
As Ledecky stepped onto the stage, Olympics theme music was played, and she smiled and gave a little wave to the students assembled there.
That morning, Ledecky addressed Stone Ridge Middle School and Upper School students in two separate sessions at the theater named for the late TV journalist Cokie Roberts, a 1960 graduate of the school. The athlete also spoke to Stone Ridge Lower School students in a multipurpose room there.
Wearing an Olympic sweater that she found from the 2012 games, Ledecky gave credit to the Stone Ridge community for its support, and for helping her find balance in her life from when she first returned to school that year as an Olympian.
“What was so great was I was able to just get right back to work, get back to school. All my teachers treated me just like any other student, all my classmates treated me like I was just another student,” she said.
Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart is sponsored by the Society of the Sacred Heart, an order of women religious, and the goals of a Sacred Heart education include faith, intellect, social action, community and growth. Asked what her favorite Sacred Heart value was, Ledecky said it is probably community, because of the support she has received from that school community and the worldwide Network of Sacred Heart Schools. During her first Olympics in London, Ledecky received messages of support from Stone Ridge students and teachers, and also from Sacred Heart sisters in the United Kingdom.
“I’ve really had a unique perspective on how powerful this community is, and how loving and caring this community is,” she said.
Before the Paris Olympics, Stone Ridge held a pep rally for Ledecky and two other alumnae who were swimming in those games – Phoebe Bacon of the class of 2020 and Erin Gemmell of the class of 2023. Students, teachers and parents wore specially designed T-shirts with the names of those three Stone Ridge Olympians. Ledecky noted how she looked up into the stands during the Paris games and could see people wearing Stone Ridge T-shirts, and Karrels was among her fans cheering her on there.
The other Stone Ridge Gator alumnae swimmers also made their mark at the Paris games, with Erin Gemmell joining Ledecky in winning a silver medal in the 4x200 meter freestyle relay, and with Phoebe Bacon finishing in fourth place in the 200-meter backstroke race, narrowly missing a bronze medal by .04 seconds.
Ledecky said she appreciated how during her years at Stone Ridge, the community supported her in her swimming journey and her academic journey.
“Education has always been a top priority in my life, it’s been a value in my family,” she said. “I never wanted to push my education aside for the sake of swimming. I always wanted to balance both of them. Stone Ridge and everyone in this community allowed me to do that, supported me in that, pushed me in school and in my sport.”
After graduating from Stone Ridge, Ledecky earned a degree in psychology from Stanford University. She is now partnering with Panasonic to support a STEM program for students. Noting that she has always loved science and math, Ledecky said, “Right now, it’s so important for young students to gain these skills in science and technology, because pretty much every profession relies on them in some capacity.”
The Olympian said another aspect of her Stone Ridge education that she appreciated was the Upper School’s Social Action Program. Ninth graders there learn about Catholic Social Teaching. Tenth graders serve at a variety of sites, and then 11th and 12th graders choose a community service site where they volunteer. On one Wednesday each month, Stone Ridge Upper School students participate in a day of community service. When she was at Stone Ridge, Ledecky volunteered with Bikes for the World, which provides donated bicycles to people in developing countries.
Ledecky said she loved the school’s Social Action Days. “I loved to be able to get out and help other people … It’s so great to learn how to give back to your community,” she said.
In all three sessions with the Stone Ridge students, Ledecky explained how she got into the sport of swimming and talked about how training and goal setting have been an important part of her success. Her swimming journey drew especially animated responses from the Lower School students sitting on the floor of the multipurpose room.
The athlete, who is now 27, told the young students that she started swimming when she was six years old, which drew a “Wow!” response, as did many of her other comments about swimming. Ledecky said she loved swimming from the start, and was inspired by her older brother Michael “to get into the sport and work really hard.” They joined a swim team together, which began her swimming journey.
For awhile, Ledecky was also playing soccer and basketball. As a youngster, she took piano lessons and did Irish dancing. The future Olympian broke her arm in gym class playing basketball in the fourth grade. She then put a plastic bag over her green cast, “so I could still kick in the pool, and that’s when I realized (that) I really love swimming,” and swimming became the sport that she concentrated on. She said she appreciated swimming “because I got to be with my friends, and because I got to set goals for myself.”
Ledecky noted that over the years, her swimming friends have included members of her community swim team, her Stone Ridge team, her Stanford team and the Olympic team.
The athlete said she has always set goals for herself. “I set my mind on something I want to achieve, whether that was in the classroom or whether that was in the pool, and I’d just go do it, do whatever it took to get those goals,” she said.
Describing the work involved in her training, Ledecky said she swims 10 times a week, which again drew a chorus of “Wow!” from the Lower School students, and she added that she swims about two hours each time, and sometimes adds another swimming session on Sundays. One little girl emphatically asked Ledecky if she ever gets tired of swimming, and the Olympian responded, “I really love it!”
Asked about her interests outside the pool, Ledecky said she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, reading, cooking and keeping up with the news.
Ledecky said she has special memories from all four of her Olympics, from her first games in London in 2012, to being able to compete in more races at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, to competing in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were held a year late due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After competing in the Paris games, she was able to stay an extra week, meet more Team USA athletes and see the men’s and women’s basketball teams play, and she was chosen as one of two U.S. flag bearers at the Olympics closing ceremony. She also had time to visit the Louvre museum.
Ledecky is training to compete in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and when asked about life after swimming, she said that graduate school in law or business is a possibility, but she plans to stay connected to swimming, to support the next generation of swimmers and encourage people to swim as a life skill.
Ledecky offered words of encouragement to all the students. Addressing the Upper School gathering, she said, “If there’s something that you do find that you love as much as I have found that with swimming, you’ve got to try to pursue it to the fullest and try to be the very best that you can be at it.” That might be a school subject, a sport or an extracurricular activity, she said.
As Ledecky’s session with Upper School students was wrapping up, a student in the balcony pleaded to ask one more question: While Ledecky was at Stone Ridge, was she on the Blue or the Gold team there? Students there are selected to be on one of those teams, which earn points for different events during the school year.
To answer the question, Ledecky smiled and held up one of her gold medals, and the students cheered.
In interviews afterward, Stone Ridge students said they appreciated Ledecky’s return to their school.
Isabelle Bernasek, a senior, noted the Olympic swimmer’s gratitude toward those who helped her along the way.
Stone Ridge eighth grader Ainsley Bell pointed out how Ledecky “wants to share the glory. It just shows she wants to make everyone feel special, and (that) they can do great things, too.”
Standing beside the pool at the Stone Ridge Aquatics Center, Katie Ledecky was interviewed by TV journalists and then spoke to the Catholic Standard newspaper of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
The graduate of Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and Little Flower School in Bethesda said that when she’s competing in the Olympics, she carries in her heart all those people that supported her from those two Catholic schools and from her home parish. “They’ve all been so great and have all helped me learn how to have balance in my life,” she said.
Asked if she still prays the Hail Mary before her swimming races, Ledecky said, “I still do that. I joke that it’s probably more like a decade of the rosary now. Yes, I’ve always done that.”
Ledecky said her Catholic faith remains a source of strength for her. The Olympian said her faith and the support of her Catholic schools and her parish help “quiet my head and quiet my heart and help me feel balance and ready and prepared and supported… I lean on everything I learned at Little Flower and Stone Ridge,” she said.
When Ledecky returned home from the Paris Olympics in August, she continued a tradition by visiting the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters at the convent at Little Flower, her home parish in Bethesda. “They taught me so much through school and with their example (0f) their faith and care for each other and the Little Flower community. They’re such great role models,” she said.
After the interview, the Olympic champion prepared to swim at her high school’s pool, to get that day’s training in.
Four days before her visit to Stone Ridge, Ledecky had stopped by the Church of the Little Flower on Oct. 18, where she visited the pastor, Msgr. Peter Vaghi, and posed for pictures with groups of children whose families were participating in a Friday evening gathering there.
“She’s a daughter of the parish… She’s been very faithful to her roots,” Msgr. Vaghi said. Speaking about her surprise appearance at the parish event, he said, “She was good to all the kids. She came in and was like a rock star.”
Sister Rosemaron Rynn, an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister who served as the principal of Little Flower School from 1994-2018, led the school when Ledecky was a student there. She and the other sisters appreciate how the athlete has a tradition of visiting them after each Olympics.
“We all say she’s a wonderful swimmer. I respect her for the fine young woman she has become,” Sister Rosemaron said, adding that when Ledecky stops by to show them her latest Olympic medals and tell them about her experiences, “It’s like old friends getting together.”
