Student Athlete Spotlight: Gabby Jones '24

Gabby Jones has made an immediate impact coming into the 2021-2022 swimming season. After having no meets and no way to compete for the school in the 2020-2021 season, Gabby finally got the chance to put her practice into use competing in the first meet of the season. In the season opener versus Baldwin, Gabby came close to breaking the team record for the 50-freestyle. The record had stood at 25.44 seconds from Momoka Yamashita in 2017. Gabby swam the event in 25.49 seconds. 

 

Going into the first two home meets of the year, Gabby had her sights set on breaking 25.44 as well as breaking another record: the pool record. In swimming, records in events are kept in two ways, team times and pool times. Team records are only for the members of Perkiomen Girls Swimming team whereas the pool records are anyone who swims in the pool in Perkiomen’s Nuttel Natatorium. Sometimes a swimmer from another school will hold the record in another school’s pool. Gabby wanted to make sure Perkiomen kept their name on at least two of the pool records. In the home meet versus Abington Friends on December 10, 2021, she broke the 50-freestyle record that she set out to break a week previously, swimming the event in 25.36 seconds at home to break the Perkiomen pool record. She also broke the pool record for the 100-freestyle, swimming it in 54.97 seconds. Finally, to cap off an impressive streak, she broke the team record once again at the Hill School Meet on December 15, 2021 swimming the 50-freestyle in 25.32 seconds. 

 

There is still a lot of time left in the season and plenty of time for Gabby to continue breaking records.