By Abigail Lockwood

Last year as a freshman, Mayanna Cook was one of the five girls from Batavia High School to join the girls’ co-op swim team with the West Chicago Wildcats. A year after setting two freshman school records, Cook became the first Batavia swim team member to qualify for the IHSA State swim meet. She will compete at the State meet on Friday in the 400 free relay, the 100 fly, and the 100 back after winning the backstroke event at the IHSA Sectional meet.

“Myanna has improved dramatically from last year when I first started working with her,” said head coach Nick Parry. “She worked extremely hard during the club season to improve her technique and her training habits. Without a doubt, Myanna deserves to be at the state meet through her hard work. During club season, she spent extra time working on her stroke and technique to clean up some areas that were not quite where they needed to be, and her work ethic in practice has increased greatly.”

Out of every high school swimmer in the state only about 350 students make it to the IHSA State meet and this year Cook took the meaning of hard work to another level.

“She broke two team records (thus far) this season,” said coach Parry.” The first record that she broke was the 100 butterfly record. Myanna’s time for this season is 57.13 beating our old record of 58.48. In the other event, Myanna anchored a 400 freestyle relay that broke a school record with a time of 3:32.98 breaking the old record of 3:33.40.”

The girls who held the old school records all went on to swim at NCAA Division I schools around the country.

We are very proud to have this young Bulldog representing our school at the state finals and are looking forward to what will come of this weekend’s event. The State swim meet is at Evanston Township High School. Prelims are on Friday, November 21 at 3:30pm and finals are on Saturday, November 22. Congratulations Myanna; we are looking forward to seeing what is to come in these next two years at Batavia High School!