Team Redbirds’ Ellen Reynolds To Be Inducted To Masters International Swimming HOF in 2026

Courtesy: Jelena Kunovac, MD, MS

Over 20 years of excellence and unwavering self-discipline outline Ellen Reynolds‘ Masters swimming profession. Ellen has someway managed to construct one of the exceptional Masters swimming careers in historical past alongside her life as a distinguished pediatric surgeon in Boise, Idaho. Her dominance as one of the versatile and achieved Masters swimmers ever is greatest illustrated by the world information she not too long ago set throughout all 4 strokes—starting from the 50 butterfly to the 200 breaststroke—and together with her signature occasions, the 200 and 400 particular person medley and 50,100 and 200 backstroke.  This coming May, she will probably be formally inducted into the International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame.

Ellen, a member of Team Redbird, grew up as a aggressive age-group swimmer. During faculty and medical faculty, swimming was quickly placed on maintain. Then, on the age of 40—already the mom of two and a board-certified pediatric surgeon—Ellen determined to return to the pool, each to get again in form and to indicate her kids that train needs to be a vital a part of life.

Her coach for a few years was her mom, Mary Ann, a doctor herself. Mary Ann immersed herself in books and articles on physiology, coaching principle, and method, and collectively she and Ellen designed the coaching plans that will form Ellen’s extraordinary profession. I vividly bear in mind my first Masters swim meet in December 2016, seeing the 2 of them behind the blocks—Mary Ann holding a clipboard stuffed with numbers, calmly reminding Ellen of some technical cues earlier than the following race.

Ellen’s first world report got here within the 50 backstroke on the age of 45—and he or she tied it twice. Over her profession, she has damaged near 90 particular person world information and moreover, presently holds 5 relay world information. The spotlight of her swimming journey got here throughout the 2024–2025 season, when she shattered 26 Aqua Masters world information in a single 12 months—an achievement beforehand achieved solely by the icon of Masters swimming, Laura Val. During that season, Ellen boldly ventured into new occasions, pushing herself past even her personal expectations, breaking world information for the primary time in races such because the 50 butterfly and the 200 breaststroke.

At the 2024 World Aquatics Masters Championships in Doha, Qatar, Ellen’s dominance was so hanging that she not solely broke 5 world information at a single competitors, however her time of two:30.58 within the 200 backstroke would have received the boys’s 60–64 age-group occasion.

Ellen’s work ethic—each out and in of the pool—is second to none. For years, she has educated within the early morning hours earlier than heading to the working room, along with her pager typically in Mary Ann’s fingers. The basis of her success is unbelievable consistency, an uncompromising give attention to technical element, and an nearly supernatural skill to push past beforehand established limits, in apply and in competitors. The subsequent time you watch Ellen race, discover how she will barely climb out of the pool when the race is over.

Ellen by no means forgets those that assist her alongside the way in which—from meet volunteers, to her coach and mom Mary Ann, fiancé Brian Jonson, to her longtime coaching companion John, present coach Kristi and her Redbird teammates. As a workforce member, she is beneficiant and quietly inspiring, unselfishly providing considerate solutions to assist others enhance. She celebrates her teammates’ victories as in the event that they had been her personal. Ellen elevates everybody round her—and that, as a lot as her information, is why she belongs within the Hall of Fame.