Thirteen swimmers and one diver will advance to regionals after competing in the district swim meet on Jan. 20. The preliminary and final regional meet will be on Feb. 2 and 3 at the LISD Westside Aquatic Center.

“Our district meet went well,” senior Grant Rainwater said. “A lot of personal bests were thrown down as well, and many of our swimmers are competing in individual events at regionals. Most importantly though, each and every one of us gave it our all.”

Freshmen Marian Cheramy, Miguel Barcellano, Rachel Dillard, Noah Kelly, sophomore Matthew Alvarez, and seniors Jaylynn Whitt, Paris Taylor, Bryan Nelson, Nickole Huerta, Clay Calhoun, Allison Dillard, Grant Rainwater, Mackenzie Garcia Hynds and Conor Milligan are all regional qualifiers.

“I’ve gone to regionals every year since I was a freshman, and I’ve always done well at the meets,” Milligan said. “Having a week of [practice] before the meet means that the team is at the peak and ready to perform. Everyone on the team is focused and ready to drop time.”

Many swimmers have set personal goals for improving their performance in future meets. In order to advance to the state meet, Milligan said swim would have to get a championship-qualifying time.

“I’m looking to qualify for championship finals and get [the] best times in each of the three events I’ll be participating in,” Milligan said. “I like to say you can’t argue with personal bests, whether it’s .01 of a second or 3 seconds better than before.”

Being seniors, the regional swim meet may be the last meet they participate in for Hebron.

“It’s definitely hard to be wrapping up four years of high school swimming,” Milligan said. “Thirty hours a week of training for the last four years all culminates in this regional meet, so I’m going to push my limits since this is my last opportunity to post top times.”

The top six swimmers/divers at district make it to regionals and the top two in each event at regionals move on to the state meet.

“I guess we’ll just have to see on Saturday [if anyone makes it to state],” Hynds said. “But it’d be incredible if I got to go to state my last year. But it’s just very hard since we are in a hard region with all these fast schools [in] Dallas/Fort Worth like, Southlake, Allen, Flower Mound and Plano. So it’s not as easy, but we never know, we just have to wait and see.”