By CLAIRE CRUZ, Staff Writer
The Class 6A boys state swimming & diving meet was a grueling day for Brownsville Hanna’s Quinten Deysel.
The senior competed in two events, with just one event in between to rest. In his first swim in the 50-yard freestyle preliminary race, Deysel injured his heel off the turn. Though he was in pain, Deysel still put in three more good swims before the long day’s end.
Deysel finished 16th in both the 50 and 100 freestyle prelim races, with times of 23.70 and 49.68, respectively. That qualified him to swim in the consolation heats in the finals portion of the event, which began at 5 p.m.
Deysel and Hanna swim coach Sam Perez worked on turns in the practice pool and kept his foot iced so he would be good to swim during the second session.
The extra effort paid off. Deysel improved his time in both events, swimming a 22.56 to finish 16th in the 50 free and a 49.02 to take 16th place in the 100 free.
“He’s a pretty determined kid. I was just happy to see him be able to finish off his swim career,” Perez said. “After that first race when he got injured, that would’ve broken my spirit. But not him. He said he was good, was, like, ‘I can do this. I have to swim again.’ He wanted to compete, walked out of there with his head high. He swam really well his last two races of his career, so can’t ask for anything better than that.”
Los Fresnos senior Evyn Garcia also swam in the consolation heat in the 100 butterfly. He finished 16th in the second session with a time of 53.53, improving on his preliminary time of 53.62.
Garcia also competed on the Falcons’ 200 freestyle relay team. Los Fresnos finished 14th in the preliminary session and overall in the event after a 1:33.66 time in the consolation heat during the second session.