Lydia Jacoby

Lydia Alice Jacoby (born February 29, 2004) is an American professional swimmer.

For high school, she started attending Seward High School in Seward in 2018, where she swam as part of the high school swim team, setting high school state records for Alaska in the 100-yard breaststroke in both 2018 and 2019.

Jacoby first qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in late 2018 when she was 14 years old.

This first qualification was in the 100-meter breaststroke.

She swam her qualifying time at the year's U.S. Winter National Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.

That same year, she won titles in the 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard individual medley at the Alaska High School State Championships.

Her time of 2:09.31 in the 200-yard individual medley won her the state title in that event for girl's high school swimming.

Her time of 1:03.11 in the 100-yard breaststroke won her the girl's high school state title in that event as well as setting a new Alaska state record.

The following year, she broke the Alaska state record she set in the girl's 100-yard breaststroke in 2018 with a time of 1:00.61.

Her swim also won her the title in the event at the 2019 Alaska State High School Championships.

She took third in the state in the girl's 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:09.83.

At the 2019 Alaska Age Group Championships, held in February 2019, Jacoby competed in seven individual events including winning the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:02.68, the 200-yard breaststroke with a 2:28.65, and the 200-yard individual medley in 2:10.58.

One month later, she competed in five individual events at the 2019 Northwest Speedo Sectionals swim meet held at King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Washington, including swimming a 1:00.42 in the 100-yard breaststroke to place second and finish less than three-tenths of a second behind first-place finisher Kaitlyn Dobler.

Five months later, in August, she won the junior national champion title in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Speedo Junior National Championships.

Based on her results, she was named to the U.S. Junior National Team later in 2019.

For the whole 2019 year, Jacoby ranked 16th in the United States for the 100-meter breaststroke.

She was the first Alaskan to qualify for an Olympic Games in swimming, competing at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, where she won the gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 1:04.95, which was the fastest time ever achieved by a female American swimmer in the event in the 17–18 age group.

Later in the year, she was the overall highest scoring female American competitor at the 2021 FINA Swimming World Cup.

In 2022, she became the fastest female American swimmer in history in the 100-yard breaststroke for the 17–18 age group with a national age group record time of 57.54 seconds.

In 2023, she further lowered the record to a time of 57.45 seconds, then 57.29 seconds, and set a national age group record of 2:04.32 for the girls 17–18 age group in the 200-yard breaststroke.

She is the 2023 NCAA Division I champion in the women's 100-yard breaststroke.

Jacoby was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised in Seward, Alaska.

She started swimming when she was six years old with her local swim team, the Seward Tsunami Swim Club.

By the time Jacoby was 12 years old, she had broken her first Alaska state record in swimming.

In 2020, she opted not to compete on the school swim team due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instead choosing to be home-schooled.

At the end of the 2020 year, Jacoby committed to swimming in college for the University of Texas at Austin starting in the fall of 2022.

One of the college majors she expressed interest in at the time of committing to the University of Texas was fashion design.

She returned to Seward High School in the fall of 2021 for her senior year.

She finished off her senior year swimming scholastically for Seward High School as well and graduated as valedictorian of her high school class.

She also served on her high school newspaper as a columnist and appeared in Port City Players productions, theatre productions, more than once.

In the autumn of 2022, Jacoby started attending the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in textiles and apparel, and began competing collegiately for the Texas Longhorns.

Jacoby sang, wrote songs, and played double bass as part of a bluegrass band named the Snow River String Band for six years performing at the Anchorage Folk Festival multiple times prior to 2021 (when she turned 17 years old).

In addition to bass and singing, Jacoby can play guitar and piano.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jacoby was out of the pool for two months and found other forms of staying active including skiing and running with ice cleats.

Jacoby and her father made a makeshift weight rack in the garage during the pandemic so she could continue lifting weights as well.

When pools re-opened in Alaska, the pool in Seward remained temporarily closed so Jacoby practiced at Service High School in Anchorage with the Northern Lights Swim Club.

Her mother, Leslie Jacoby, helped with commuting to the pool and renting an apartment to make swim practices.

In 2020 Jacoby qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming in two events for the first time, the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke events.

At the time she was one of 12 swimmers in the history of the state of Alaska to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming.

Towards the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, she expressed relief about the 2020 Olympic Games being postponed due to unfair conditions created with some pools closed and others open, sharing her perspective with Anchorage Daily News, "I feel like I'm in a good place now, because when they closed the pool I was really concerned about the Olympics and the trials — it's not a fair environment, because not everybody's pools are closed."