Up until about six weeks ago, the last time that Annie Walls was in a swimming pool was when she swam at states held at Bucknell University back in March.

Walls put in an impressive performance in the 500-yard freestyle event in the preliminaries, finishing just .41-seconds behind Elle Brown of Upper Dublin High School to put herself seeded second in the finals scheduled for that night.

Walls, this year’s Lehigh Valley Health Network Parkland Press Female Athlete of the Year, was upbeat and ready for that night’s finals where she has always rose to the occasion and figured on besting Brown and six other swimmers for a gold medal.

Just hours before Walls was to swim in the finals, the sports world came to a screeching halt.

The decision was made to cancel the finals and use the results from the preliminaries to determine the medal finishes, meaning that Walls would unceremoniously receive a silver medal rather than the gold that she anticipated having placed around her neck on the medal stand that night.

When she was finally able to pick up her medal a few weeks ago, the harsh memories of that day came back to haunt her, but just for a short time. Instead, Walls has come to accept what happened and simply move on.

“I’ve made my peace with all of it,” she said. “It was tough when I got the medal because I really expected to win gold, but nobody could have foreseen what was going to happen and I’m still proud of the accomplishment. Right now, I’m just looking ahead.”

For Walls, looking ahead means looking to her freshman year at Penn State. Athletically, she was able to get back into a pool in mid-June and has been able to train a couple times each week even though she must travel about an hour for training.

Normally, Walls would be in the pool four or five times in a week. To fill in the extra time, she has been biking, working on her abs and doing exercises over Zoom with her club coach.

“It’s different than what I’m used to, but the extra exercise and conditioning work is really good, so I’m staying positive about it and just work hard when I do get into the pool,” said Walls.

Academically, Walls had planned on starting her college work over the summer with a couple classes on campus. Instead, she’s taking those classes online. As for the fall semester, PSU is going to give students a two-week notice of when classes will be starting this fall, so everything is in limbo for after her summer classes are over.

“I had figured that I would be able to get myself familiar with where everything was on campus and kind of get ready for the fall semester,” Walls admitted. “This isn’t how I planned on things happening, but we all just have to make it work.”

Walls finished out her senior season at Parkland taking individual gold medals in the 500-yard freestyle and 100 butterfly and added another gold as a member of the 400-yard freestyle relay at districts. As part of the 200-yard medley relay team, Walls received a silver medal.

The district meet performance earned her a share of the coveted Dennis A. McGinley Award. The Parkland girls won a gold as a team after just a one-year absence, giving them 11 district championships in 12 seasons.

“I still keep in touch with some of them,” said Walls of her former high school teammates. “We’re all busy with our club teams and working out and some of us have college to plan for. It’s fun to think back on all of the great memories.”