SWIMMING & DIVING
EYING WAYS TO HELP
Nursing student Megan Jones spearheads campaign to help health care workers
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By Brad Muller | SC Athletics • Photos by SC Athletics hrow a challenge at Megan Jones and you will likely hear, “challenge accepted.” The senior South Carolina swimmer is not only set to graduate with her nursing degree, but she is spearheading an effort to secure protective eyewear for health care workers and also volunteering to be on the frontlines in treating COVID-19 patients. “When I look back at my life, I want to be able to say that I helped people in some way,” Jones said. “Now that I’ve been in a hospital setting, it’s really cool to see the impact we can have. “I would love to be a role model for our student-athletes, not just our swimmers, that you can do nursing and be an athlete for four years.” A native of Suwanee, Ga., Jones remained in Columbia after the COVID-19 outbreak to try to get her required clinical hours for nursing. But when those plans were put on hold, she didn’t shy away from getting involved. An email from a summer-league swim team she coaches inspired her to track down “gently used” goggles from various swimming com-
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munities to be used as protective eyewear for health care workers. “One of our families had been in contact with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and they were starting to run low on the PPE goggles,” Jones said. “One of the members of the board of directors is a family friend, whose kids all swam. He suggested that we use swim goggles. He sent a message out to the Atlanta community, and I know we have a lot of goggles in our storage room that we use as a team here.” After reaching out to head coach McGee Moody to see if they could donate some of the extra team goggles, she went on social media to enlist help from other schools. “We’re donating our extra goggles, and I had a lot of alumni and pro swimmers retweet it,” Jones said. “There was a swim team in Georgia that donated 150 pairs of brandnew goggles, and then other teams contacted me about shipping goggles. We’ve heard that the Vanderbilt Medical System hospitals have a need, and I was told the Veterans Hospital here in Columbia was running out of supplies, so we might take some there when they come in. We’re still in the process of getting them in.
“Being in nursing, I’ve seen a lot of people working through this pandemic, and I’ve seen people donating things like hand sanitizer and nobody had stepped up to make goggles and things like that, so I thought the swimming community was so broad and people always have extra goggles and it was a natural fit. It turns out that Speedo is now making goggles to be donated, which is wonderful.” While she was not able to do all of her regular clinical hours due to the pandemic, Jones was not deterred and requested an opportunity to volunteer at Prisma Health Hospital in Columbia. “They haven’t finalized our clinicals schedule, and we have to get a set number of hours,” Jones explained. “We had to go through a process to be approved to volunteer, and I just got approved to do that. I just have to wait and see when they want me to come in and work their outside testing and screening process. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that soon. “I was a little nervous, but I’m not one of those people who sits still very well. Now that I’m done with swimming and school is online, this is something I can do. I have the time and the education to help people
MAY 2020
