Anna Kirby, 11, breaks the school record in the team meet at Northampton on Jan. 30.

Before Tuesday night the Stroudsburg High School record for the 100-meter freestyle was 54.43 seconds. The record was held by Alex Burns in 2013. Kirby beat that time by  0.46 seconds securing the record time of 53.97. 

Anna does not want to stop her accomplishments here. She plans to break a few more school records throughout her junior season.

Kirby says, “I hope to keep progressing in the future.” 

Kirby has been working on this goal since her sophomore year of swimming. She has shown tremendous progress since starting, especially over this season.

Kirby was nominated for Pocono Record’s Athlete of the Week during the week of Jan. 1 to Jan. 6, 2024. She stole the first-place spot with over 56.87% of the votes among the other three nominations. She gained nearly six hundred votes alone.

After Kirby’s freshman year of swimming, she decided to dedicate herself and focus on swimming all year round.  As Anna continues to work to break set records from Stroudsburg, that is not where she stops. Kirby has made personal best times in all eight individual events this year.

She and Coach William Conklyn hope she will beat a few more school records and earn a spot on the podium at districts.

Along with Kirby, “The team as a whole has been showing improvements over the entire season and the coaches are excited to see what they can do in our last few meets over the next four weeks”, says Coach Conklyn.

The team has made lots of improvements at meets and they have all been working hard at practices six days a week.