Hometown Hopefuls: Lydia Jacoby, Alaska

Throughout the summer, in a series called Hometown Hopefuls, NBC is spotlighting the stories of Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls from all fifty states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, as they work towards the opportunity to represent their country at the Paris 2024 Games next year. We’ll learn about their paths to their sports’ biggest stage, and the towns and communities that have been formative along the way. Visit NBCSports.com/hometownhopefuls  for more stories from across America as these Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls prepare for Paris in summer 2024.

Since Alaskan Lydia Jacoby won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, the swimmer experienced heartbreak in the pool, depression inside and outside of it and a move that helped her deal with the complexities and difficulties of becoming an overnight teenage star.

Jacoby, a 19-year-old from Seward, just finished her freshman year at the University of Texas. It was a success.

She checked off a picture with Bevo (soon after moving into her dorm), taking in the Pennybacker Bridge overlook and attending a Kid Cudi concert. Oh yeah, she also won the NCAA title in the 100-yard breaststroke.

"I know Austin is not like a huge city by any extent, but it's bustling," she said. To be fair to the Texas capital, its population is 370 times that of Seward.

Jacoby endured some of the most difficult times of her life in the year between the Olympics, where she was the youngest U.S. gold medalist across all sports, and her matriculation. It began with her return from Tokyo for her senior year at Seward High.

"For a while, I was fine," she said. "I trained really well for like two or three weeks, and then I just crashed. I was not wanting to come to practice, just kind of half-assing everything. It just was draining in the pool and in life. I wasn't putting 100% of myself into anything I was doing, whether that was relationships, swimming."

Jacoby had heard about what she called "post-Olympic depression" from veterans on the Olympic team.

"You don't really entirely understand what that all entails until you go through it," she said. "I don't think there's really a way to prepare people for that just because it was such a foreign experience for most of us."

Olympic stars often take months off after the Games to rest and recharge. Jacoby had excitedly gone right back into it. She was the lone individual American gold medalist from Tokyo to enter the next major meet, the short course world championships in Abu Dhabi in December 2021.

But Jacoby had to withdraw due to COVID-19 protocols, right around the time she also graduated early from high school.

Then in April 2022, Jacoby endured what she called a "crushing" experience. She finished third in the 100m breast at the U.S. trials meet, where only the top two per individual event qualify for the world championships. She missed the team by nine hundredths of a second.

Lilly King, who won the 2016 Olympic title in Jacoby's event, also as a teenager, offered perspective that night.

“I told [Jacoby] good job,” King said. “That’s tough. It is definitely a setback, but she has a bright future ahead of her.

"I know, especially from personal experience, that the year after the Olympics, it’s really hard. And I can’t imagine going back to high school the year after the Olympics.”

To Jacoby's credit, she did swim personal bests in her two complementary breaststroke events at those trials. Plus, the U.S. has never carried over all of its individual Olympic gold medalists to the following year’s world championships. Still, she now reflects on it as a turning point.

"That was a really good wake-up call for me to realize what I'm doing is not sustainable, and I need to make some changes," she said.

Whether she wanted to or not, changes were already on the way. Jacoby packed up her favorite clothes and the guitar she strummed with the Snow River String Band and moved from the northernmost state to the southernmost capital of the contiguous 48.

"I've been absolutely loving my time with the Longhorns, and I have no intention of stopping," she said when asked if she plans to swim all four years in college. "I love training with Carol [Capitani] and Mitch [Dalton], they're amazing coaches. I really like Austin. So, yeah, for the time being I'm super comfortable here."

She's also branched out. On a trip to Mexico last year, Jacoby got a tattoo of an airplane to mark the 10th country that she has visited since the Tokyo Games.

If all goes well at this month's national championships, she'll be headed back to Japan in July for the world championships.

That would mean she will miss the Seward's crown jewel event -- the Mount Marathon race on July 4 -- a 1.5-mile climb up a mountain, then back down. She was due to be bib 119 in the event in 2021 before her incredible climb onto the U.S. Olympic team.

It's nearly as far from Austin to Anchorage as it is from Anchorage to Tokyo, but Jacoby did make it back home over Christmas break. Plus, her parents have visited on campus often.

"After the Olympics and everything, I was very ready to be like super independent," she said. "I was like, 'Oh, I'm a grown girl. I know everything there is to know about everything.' So I was really ready to get out there on my own. But in retrospect, I do wish that it was maybe a two-hour flight instead of, like, eight hours."

Jacoby will always be the pride of Seward and of The Last Frontier.

Of the enduring images of the Tokyo Games, the wild celebration from her classmates at the watch party at the Lindsey Railroad Terminal is near the top of the list. Even before the Olympics, Jacoby remembers seeing signs in almost every window in town rooting her on. There were bumper stickers, foam fingers. A parade after the Games.

"There's so much just so much community support," she said. "My town, specifically, and the entire state."

Public speaking opportunities brought her to a high school in Juneau, where she shared her story in front of an assembly of, essentially, her peers.

"At the beginning, I didn't really know what my message was," she said. "As I've grown and kind of learned more about myself and my sport, I think perspective is kind of the biggest message that I like to try to share while I'm just sharing my story. Just because I feel like people can get so wrapped up in their sport or their job or academics or whatever it is that they're pursuing in life. Everything is just like a chapter in your life. And while it's important, it's not everything about who you are. So I feel like that's a big message that I try to remember personally, and I think it's important to share."

Jacoby is competing this week at the U.S. Swimming Championships, where she can qualify for the 2023 World Championships. For more information about the U.S. Championships and how to watch, click here .

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