Heritage swimmers competed at the UIL District meet at the FISD Natatorium on Friday, January 17 after preparing the entire season. One student will continue to advance and represent Heritage at Regionals. FISD is one of the fastest districts in the region for swimming, making the competition between teams very high.

At the district meet last Friday, swimmers needed to swim a near perfect race to be one of the top 6 swimmers per event to advance to regionals. At this meet specifically, there was 20-65 swimmers in each event, further divided into heats of 3-8.

“Sometimes it’s a little bit of pressure going up against some of the fastest people, but also it pushes me to be better and get faster to be up to those peoples’ levels,” sophomore Adviti Pilla said. “I tell myself to go as hard as I can, even if it hurts, just go for it.”

These athletes have been preparing for this meet since the beginning of the school year; even when they had practices during breaks and days off so naturally, they were very excited to see their hard work pay off.

“I feel proud of the team and what they’ve done, and the coach for what he’s done with the team,” sophomore Kaidon Peterson said. “It really is such a close team and we are a huge family, which is really nice.”

One swimmer from the Heritage team, Michael Mitsynskyy, was able to qualify for regionals in both the 200 IM and the 500 free. He will be swimming at Regionals on Jan. 31 & Feb. 1 at the FISD Natatorium. Michael has big goals for not only this meet, but for the rest of his season.

“Obviously my main goal is to make it to state, but I would love to make it on the podium for 200 IM and go to a time of 1:54/1:55 that could secure my spot for state and break my own Heritage record of 1:56.73,” junior Michael Mitsynskyy said. “I would also like to make top 3 and get 4:45 to secure another spot for state.”