Fox Chapel’s Skirboll, Highlands’ Bonnett ready for Olympic trials
Share this post:
Zoe Skirboll was among the spectators at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Swim Trials in Omaha, Neb., and she watched the best in the nation compete for spots on the team that competed a month later in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“It was breathtaking,” said Skirboll, an Aspinwall resident.
“I had never been to a meet like that before. There were thousands of people in the stands. Seeing that, from that point on, I knew I had to do everything I could to make it to this next step and swim at the Olympic Trials. I wanted to be that swimmer that walks out in front of all those people on such a grand stage.”
From age 12 to now 16, Skirboll has reached her goals. She joins Highlands graduate and University of Kentucky senior Bailey Bonnett in representing the Alle-Kiski Valley and the Pittsburgh region at the Olympic Trials set to begin Friday in Omaha.
“I am so excited to swim at the Olympic Trials. It’s hard to put it into words,” said Skirboll, a high school junior who is recruited to swim at Virginia.
“To have it finally be here, it is an amazing feeling. I have the same goal as every swimmer there this weekend and that is to swim my best, compete and see what happens.”
Skirboll, a five-time national age group record holder and a former WPIAL and PIAA champion as a freshman at Fox Chapel, is one of the youngest in the field. She swims her first event Friday morning and will compete in four events: the 50-meter freestyle, the 100 free, 100 breaststroke and 200 individual medley.
Her best seed placement comes in the 100 breast, where she is 19th with a time of 1 minute, 10.40 seconds. She finalized her event portfolio a couple of weeks ago by securing a qualifying time in the 200 IM at a meet in Virginia.
The swim trials, delayed for a year when the Tokyo Olympics were postponed because of covid, are split into two waves. Wave I will run from Friday to Sunday and feature more than 500 swimmers from throughout the country.
The top two finishers in each event at the Wave I trials will move on to the Wave II competition, set for June 13 to 20, and join a grouping of faster qualifiers. From there, the U.S. Olympic Team will be determined.
Bonnett will join the process in Wave II. She competed at the 2016 trials in the 200 breast and 400 IM and earned Wave II cuts in both of those events for this year’s trials.
Her 200 IM and 100 breast cuts met Wave I qualification, but because she has qualified for Wave II swims, she also will be able to swim the 200 IM and 100 breast at the Wave II meet.
“When I first swam there, I was young and I didn’t really know what to expect,” said Bonnett, who will compete at the trials with a group of Kentucky teammates.
“I was training up to the point of tying to get the cut times right before I left. Now, I already had those cut times, and I’ve been able to focus just on my training and tapering to get the fastest times I can in a couple of weeks.”
Both Skirboll and Bonnett, along with others qualifiers from the Pittsburgh region such as North Allegheny graduates Torie Buerger and Mason Gonzalez and Upper St. Clair senior Josh Matheny, knew patience was key after last year’s postponement.
The swim trials are a go despite recent discussions about how ready Japan is to host the Olympic games amid attempts to speed up the covid vaccination process.
“I’ve just tried to put my head down, concentrate on training and stay away from all that other stuff,” said Skirboll, whose recent training regiment took her to both Valley High School and the Fox Chapel Racquet Club.
“I’ve been focused on what is right in front of me and what I can control.”
Bonnett has taken a similar approach as she begins to wrap up a training plan that ramped up after the conclusion of Kentucky’s season at the NCAA championships March 20.
Covid not only postponed the trials from last year, but Bonnett and her Wildcats teammates felt the immediate sting of the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA national meet.
“That was the most shocking thing, not being able to go to NCAAs,” Bonnett said.
“We were training up to the day before it was canceled, and we were about to leave for NCAAs. When the Olympics got postponed a couple of weeks later, there were so many other things that had happened that the team just got used to having things change. So that wasn’t as big of a shock. It was like, ‘Oh, here’s another thing that we have to push through.’ ”
This spring, the Kentucky women’s team, with Bonnett and Buerger, enjoyed a banner season with its first SEC championship.
“That was something really awesome to be a part of,” Bonnett said. “All of the girls worked so hard. We went in with a plan, and we executed it really nicely and came home with a championship. It was very exciting.”
The team went on to earn its best-ever NCAA finish, placing 11th overall.
Bonnett earned individual honorable-mention honors at nationals with an 11th-place finish in the 400 IM and a 16th in the 200 breast.
While flying solo at the 2016 trials with just one coach from her Fox Chapel Killer Whales club team, Bonnett said she is grateful to be there this time with a large group of teammates and coaches.
“That is a big difference,” she said. “It will be really awesome to have that support and to also support everyone else in their swims. Some of my teammates have a really great chance at qualifying for the Olympics. That would be really great to watch one of my teammates do that.”