Kingwood Swimming has had an incredibly successful year. Kicking off the start of the season in September with the annual Blue-White meet brought plenty of spirit for the team and excitement for the upcoming swim season. October and November brought around the busiest time of the year for the swim team, and although both JV and varsity had back-to-back meets many weeks, the swim team pushed through and went on to win a vast majority of those meets. Additionally, in October the freshmen 200 medley relay record was broken and in November the freshmen 200 freestyle relay record was also broken by swimmers Trevor James, Blane Gerth, Ben Soto, and Anthony Sacco. Varsity swimmers competed in their first championship-style meet at the end of November, with the Kingwood girls team placing 3rd out of 18 teams and the boys placing 2nd out of 19 teams. Onto December and JV had their District championship meet at the Galena Park ISD natatorium. Kingwood High School had many fast and impressive swims and, as always, placed 1st at the JV Districts meet.

Starting varsity championship season in January with a bang, Kingwood High School girls and boys were the District 21-6A champions for the 7th year in a row. Lizzie Watson was named swimmer of the meet and has proven to be a huge asset to the team. At the Region swim meet, Kingwood boys and girls placed 1st for the 7th consecutive year, with many swimmers qualifying for the State championship meet. At the State meet, boys placed 3rd marking the 6th consecutive year of Kingwood boys placing in the top 3. This is an extremely impressive feat as there were about 75 teams total competing at the state level. A few highlights of the State swim meet:

• Girls 200 medley relay placed 6th (Lizzie Watson, Meredith Fagen, Lauryn Bingley, Ava Casperson)
• Edwald Jin placed 5th in the 200 freestyle
• Brendan Studdert placed 6th in the 200 IM
• Tyler Grafmiller placed 9th in both the 100 freestyle and 100 butterfly
• Edwald Jin placed 6th in the 100 freestyle
• Brendan Studdert placed 8th in the 100 backstroke
• Lizzie Watson placed 5th in the 100 backstroke
• Ava Casperson placed 12th in the 500 freestyle
• Boys 200 freestyle relay placed 2nd (Brendan Studdert, Tyler Grafmiller, Zach Clowers, Edwald Jin)
• Boys 400 freestyle relay placed 2nd (Brendan Studdert, Tyler Grafmiller, Zach Clowers, Edwald Jin)

The end of the season brought the annual swim banquet, celebrating the end of the season and sending off the seniors to their next chapter. At the banquet, the coaches recognized the swimming and diving program’s 14 Academic All-States and 9 Academic All-Americans. These athletes were recognized for upholding good academic standing and maintaining a 3.75 GPA (on a 4.0 scale) while participating on the swim and dive team. The coaches expressed their joy with the program and how proud they are of the team for the amazing 2022-2023 Season.

The Kingwood Swimming and Diving program had an amazing season and there is still so much more in store for the program in the years to come.

“I thought overall the season was a huge success. The girls came together as a team which was the number one goal, so that was the most important thing to me and they came up huge performance-wise, which made me very proud but more proud of how the team came together. From the guys’ perspective, our goal coming into the season was to get 3rd at State and they accomplished their goal, so it was a huge success.” -Coach Robinson

Congrats to the following for taking their swimming careers to the next level, they will be swimming in college this coming fall.

• Brendan Studdert – A&M
• Zach Clowers – Old Dominion
• Lucas Blado – St. Thomas
• Kirill Lyzhin – Converse University