For all of the individuality that goes into competitive swimming, the sport offers a balancing sense of community and teamwork. Relay races, for instance, are critical to a team’s overall success and require each subsequent swimmer to build upon the foundation the preceding teammate has laid.
Current Penn Charter seniors Ava Gonnella and Eva McIver-Jenkins completed their high school swim careers at PC in February; over the past four years, the duo has epitomized how the sport can bring not just teams but communities together.
It started with an idea developed by Gabby Lopez-Ona, a former PC swimmer who graduated in 2020. Lopez-Ona grew up in Philadelphia and lifeguarded at an affluent swim club, and observed that access to community pools and swimming resources for children in underprivileged neighborhoods was severely lacking. Many pools lacked funds and enough certified lifeguards, were improperly-maintained, or closed altogether. In one of her PC classes, Lopez-Ona came up with the idea for Laps for Philly, with its mission of holding an annual lap-a-thon to create awareness and fund equal access to pools and swimming lessons for children in Philadelphia.
Lopez-Ona laid the groundwork, utilizing Penn Charter’s pool and raising approximately $5,000, mostly through social media marketing, for the first lap-a-thon. Then the pandemic hit and Lopez-Ona graduated, leaving Laps for Philly some money but with no pool to use for a year due to Covid.
Enter Gonnella and McIver-Jenkins. Both came to Penn Charter as freshmen, Gonnella from Blue Bell and McIver-Jenkins from West Philly. As members of the swim program — Gonnella also played water polo — and Penn Charter Aquatic Club, the new students quickly learned of Lopez-Ona’s initiative and decided it was time to reactivate the mission. Current PC head swim coach Crystal Keelan connected the duo via Zoom to Lopez-Ona, then at Williams College, to map out not just how to continue Laps for Philly but take it to the next level.
“I really just loved the community, I loved the team, and I was excited to immerse myself in that,” Gonnella said during a recent conversation on PC’s campus. “What makes this place so special is the people. There’s an overwhelming amount of care and investment in you and your classmates. That investment infuses positive energy throughout the community that pushes people to do different things and puts themselves out there.
“It establishes the community culture of wanting to be better, and not just for yourself. Be better for the community, be better for your classmates, try new things and put forth your overall best self.”
McIver-Jenkins, who like Lopez-Ona grew up in the city and was exposed to the inequities facing youth swimmers, vowed to combat this stigma once she was at a place that gave her a platform to make a tangible difference.
“The amount of opportunities I’ve had at this school are innumerable,” McIver-Jenkins said. “As far as community involvement goes, there’s a huge sense of trust at PC, which fosters an environment of inspiring students to take on initiatives. Just trying or creating something new that comes from passion or motivates them. When I came here, that’s exactly what I felt. It made me want to be better and do more, and the teachers and staff push us to push ourselves and give us the independence to explore what is needed in our community.
“For me specifically as a Black girl and swimmer, there’s not a lot of representation for African-American swimmers. That discourages people from going out and trying the sport. There’s a stigma that’s integrated into [swimming], and I wanted to be a part of something that pushed back on that. To be able to fight for that is what inspires me and keeps me going.”
Gonnella cited a statistic that kids are 80 percent less likely to know how to swim if their parents never learned, indicating a cyclical, generational problem. She and McIver-Jenkins got to work setting up another swim-a-thon as sophomores to raise additional funds for lessons, and the pair also worked with PC’s Center for Public Purpose to provide bus transportation to and from Penn Charter for interested children while also ensuring that equipment such as bathing suits, goggles and swim caps would be available if needed.
They established a relationship with North Philadelphia’s Community Partnership School, and the demand quickly outran their supply of time. Gonnella and McIver-Jenkins sacrificed countless flex and lunch periods to plan. They’ve worked with ambassador clubs in the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools to help bring in other students to their cause, performing additional ventures such as designing tie-dye T-shirts, doing craft projects and establishing bathing suit and goggle drives.
“These two wonderful humans have taken it over completely and have been amazing,” Keelan said. “They have gotten lots of overwhelmingly positive feedback from parents and kids who were excited and appreciative to be able to participate in this.”
Keelan said the most recent lap-a-thon raised $15,000 and there is a waitlist to sign up. Gonnella and McIver-Jenkins teach lessons from noon until 2 p.m. on some Saturdays in the spring and summer months.
“Being involved and engaged in swimming in multifaceted ways inside and outside of Penn Charter has allowed us to spread the message,” Gonnella said. “We need to be doing more lessons on our end because the demand and need has become so high.”
The city of Philadelphia now pays for lifeguard certification, so all of the funds raised by Laps for Philly can be poured solely into swim lessons for kids who need it. Most of the students who have participated have been elementary-school aged, with the minimum age requirement being four years old.
“I grew up in this city, and the pool I swam in before PC was not well-funded,” McIver-Jenkins said. “It had no starting blocks and no chlorine or temperature control. Once I got to Penn Charter I wanted to bring the coaching, equipment and resources to which we have access to other students and swimmers in the city, especially those who come from underserved neighborhoods like mine.”
The girls estimated that Laps for Philly serves at least 20 families with the hopeful future capability of reaching even more. With both McIver-Jenkins and Gonnella graduating in June, it will soon be time to pass the baton to current swimmers within the PC program, the same way the duo took ownership of the initiative from Lopez-Ona. Nobody has officially been tabbed yet, but there are some candidates. Beyond just handing the keys off to fellow swimmers, McIver-Jenkins, who will attend Brown University to study biomedical engineering and continue her swim career, said non-swimmers will be a big part of Laps For Philly’s future.
“The ambassadors program is probably going to be the foundation of Laps for Philly and will help keep it going,” she said. “Spreading it out to reach other schools is going to be what allows our mission to stay alive in Philadelphia – recruiting younger students and generations to take this over. The benefits of swimming as a life-saving activity and competitive sport are invaluable, and I don’t think the city invests in these types of activities enough. And we specifically chose swimming because we’re swimmers, but there are other sports that are not investing enough for underserved communities to get involved with recreationally.”
As Gonnella said, a community pool can serve as a number of things: a getaway, a source of activity or just a general place to connect with like-minded others. Penn Charters empowers its students to make a tangible difference in underserved communities, and for students such as Gonnella and McIver-Jenkins, it has given them valuable tools for life after PC while also allowing them to impact the lives of others.
“It’s definitely not something to be taken for granted,” McIver-Jenkins said. “I think [Laps for Philly] has opened my eyes and given me an appreciation for volunteering and putting myself out into the community. It’s just really inspiring how many people really do want to give back and make an impact on what needs help or fixing in the community.”
Gonnella concurred, sharing how helping others has ultimately helped her realize that she is capable of more than she initially thought when she ended up at a place she knew little about in ninth grade.
“I wasn’t ever planning on ending up here, but I’m incredibly excited that I did,” she said. “A culminating moment of this process was getting to work with our middle school ambassadors. That day we spent tie-dying T-shirts allowed other kids to experience the aspect of community that has become so important to us. They were interested in learning more and being engaged. Everyone has a different reason for gathering, but it’s for the sole purpose of the kids – kids who have yet to learn to swim and want to participate in the sport. That was a really cool culminating moment of everyone being in the same room and all just learning together.”
Lopez-Ona has since graduated from Williams after starting Laps for Philly all those years ago. Keelan said she communicates often with Lopez-Ona, who has been left awestruck by what her initial idea has grown into thanks to McIver-Jenkins and Gonnella’s continued efforts.
“Gabby just thinks it’s the coolest thing how they have taken it to the next level,” Keelan said. “These girls put even more time and effort into making sure it was getting out there; they definitely went above and beyond.”
– Ed Morrone, OPC '04