At age 14, Lydia Jacoby of Seward is joining an elite group of Alaska swimmers.
Jacoby qualified for the 2020 Olympic trials in the 100 breaststroke with a splendid effort at the U.S. Winter National Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
She is the 11th Alaskan in history to qualify for the trials, according to Cliff Murray of the Northern Lights Swim Club.
Jacoby on Friday won the B final in her specialty to make the cut for the June 2020 Olympics Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. She finished in 1 minutes, 10.45 seconds, which put her under the qualifying standard of 1:10.99.
Jacoby’s time was faster than the seventh- and eighth-place swimmers in the A final, which was won by Micha Sumrall in 1:07.51.
On Saturday, Jacoby placed sixth in the C finals of the 200 breaststroke in 2:38.84, four seconds off the qualifying standard for that event.
The national meet featured the country’s best swimmers – among them, Olympic champion Katie Ledecky, who won three races.
It came four weeks after the Alaska state high school championships, where the Seward High freshman twice broke the record in the 100 breaststroke (1:03.68 in preliminaries and 1:03.11 in the finals) and won the 200 individual medley (2:09.31).
Alaskans at the Olympic Trials
Clark Rush, 1980
Mia Costello, 1988
Andrew Billings, 1988
Maria Reeves, 2000
Andrew Tainter, 2000
Robert Roosa, 2000
Patty Nash, 2000
Derek Gibb, 2000, 2004
Micha Burden, 2008
Samantha Wicks, 2016