GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Recent Colorado Mesa University graduate Ben Sampson and senior captain-to-be Andrew Scoggin will compete at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for swimming in Indianapolis.  They will both race in the 100-meter backstroke while Sampson is also entered in the 200-meter individual medley.

The meet, which will set Team USA for this week's Olympics Games in Paris, France, begins Saturday (June 15) and will run through Sunday, June 23.  It will be staged in a constructed pool on a football field at Lucas Oil Stadium, the regular home of the Indianapolis Colts and other major events.  Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to attend the meet and other related activities around downtown Indianapolis throughout the 9-day festival.

Live nightly television coverage of the evening sessions will be televised over the air on NBC and Peacock while morning session preliminary heats will be streamed live and on demand through Peacock and televised on a tape-delay basis on other NBC Universal platforms.

The 100-meter backstroke preliminary heats will be held during the Sunday (June 16) morning session, which begins at 11 a.m. EDT (9 a.m. Mountain) with semifinals to be contested during that evening's session, which begin at 8 a.m. EDT (6 p.m. Mountain).  The finals will on Monday night (June 17).

Sampson's 200 IM heats will be contested on Thursday, June 20 with the semifinals to follow that evening.  That event's final and Olympic qualifiers will be contested the following evening on Friday, June 21.

A complete meet schedule and a ton of other information can be found on USA Swimming's event website.  Pre-meet psych sheets can be seen here.

The top two finishers in each individual event will be selected for Team USA provided they have met the Olympic Qualifying standard time.

Sampson, the greatest swimmer in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference history, has won six NCAA Division II titles over the past two collegiate seasons.  He was named as the NCAA Division II National Swimmer of the Year in each of the past two years and has finished the Maverick portion of his career as a 21-time all-American and 22-time RMAC Champion over ten different disciplines.

The Arvada, Colorado native, who began his career at CMU as a walk-on out of Ralston Valley High School, holds the CMU record in 12 different disciplines and set RMAC Championship records in six different events.
Sampson has committed to use his fifth year of collegiate eligibility at NCAA Division I power University of Texas after graduating from CMU in May with a degree in sport management.

He qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 100 back last summer and then added the 200 IM to his schedule during a long course time trial at the UNLV Invitational in December. 

Collegiate times, contested in a 25-yard pool commonly referred to as SCY (Short Course Yards) are not eligible for LCM (Long Course Meters) conversion for Olympic Trials qualification purposes.

Scoggin, who hails from Greeley, Colorado, has earned five CSCAA All-America honors in the first three years of his collegiate career and has won four RMAC relay titles and ten All-RMAC honors as a Maverick.

The Windsor High School product, who will captain the Mavericks in 2024-25, finished second behind Sampson in the 100-yard back at the RMAC Championships and finished tenth at the NCAA Championships with a SCY personal-best of 47.37 seconds.  He then continued training alongside Sampson and recently qualified for the Olympic Trails by winning the Longhorn Elite meet in an LCM personal best of 55.57 seconds, surpassing the qualification standard of 55.69 seconds.

Sampson set his qualifying time of 55.24 seconds by winning the USA Swimming Futures Championship in San Antonio, Texas last July and has a personal-best LCM time in the 100 back of 55.16 at the 2022 Phillips 66 USA Swimming National Championships, where he reached the 2-heat finals, placing 15^th.  He recorded his 200 IM qualifying time of 2:02.46 during a LCM time trials session before the UNLV Invitational in December, 2023.