FRIENDSWOOD — Paetow swimming continues to build upon its success, as the third-year program now has its first district gold medal winner and second-place finishes for its boys and girls teams following the District 24-5A meet on Saturday, Jan. 25, at the Friendswood High School natatorium.

Freshman Stacey Muñoz did the honors for the Panthers, winning the 100 freestyle with a time of 58.98 seconds, edging Bella Allen of Friendswood by 0.21.

“My coach told me that I was seeded first, but I knew the girl seeded second was going to be good competition and I still had to go all-out,” Muñoz said. “I want to thank my mom Lorenza, my coaches and my grandparents German and Patricia, along with my best friend Gabby (Donnelly), because I’m here because of them.”

It’s early in her high school swimming career, but Muñoz said she does have one long-term goal, in addition to dropping time.

“I really want to get a scholarship for swimming, so that’s my main goal competitively,” she said. “Time-wise, I’m not sure where I want to be yet.”

Along with the first-place finish in the 100 freestyle, Muñoz finished second in the 50 freestyle. The Paetow 200 medley relay—Muñoz, Donnelly, Jackie Serna and Alyssa Seetahal—took second place, as did the 200 freestyle relay team of Muñoz, Donnelly, Ardyn Buchanan and Samantha Figueroa.

Donnelly, another freshman, had a strong meet herself beyond getting a shout-out from her best friend. She took second in the 500 freestyle and sixth in the 50 freestyle.

The 400 freestyle relay team—Samantha Carmona, Serna, Seetahal and Liz Reyes—also earned medals with a third-place finish.

On the boys side of the meet, the Panthers sent a slew of swimmers to regionals with second-place finishes.

Josh Flores took second in the 500 freestyle and third in the 200 freestyle, and Jalen Wilson finished second in the 200 IM. Bobby Lenning finished second in the 100 freestyle and third in the 50 freestyle, while Alex Sombero took second in the 100 backstroke.

The Panthers also finished in second for the meet’s three relays. The 200 medley relay team consisted of Wilson, Clayton Schuster, Aaron Posadas and Dillon Luong. Sombero, Posadas, Chase Stanley and Lenning swam on the 200 freestyle relay, and the 400 freestyle relay included Sombero, Wilson, Stanley and Lenning.

Paetow coach Mike Jones pointed to Posadas, a senior, and Flores as swimmers who had developed substantially over his three years in the program.

“I’m really proud of the way they’ve swum this year,” he said of his teams. “I’m pretty tough on them and I have high expectations for them. Every Monday morning, we’re sprinting. Every Tuesday morning, we’re sprinting. Every day, we’re in there sprinting. They’ve done very well and I’m glad to see them all dropping time.”

Posadas said he didn’t have much swim experience before joining the team. Now he’ll compete at regionals in four events.

“I feel pretty confident that I can do well there,” he said. “There’s some stuff I can work on, like quick turns and kicking, but I think I can fix that before regionals. I feel pretty proud of my teammates for how we swam and how many of them qualified for regionals.”

Jones noted that because the program was only in its third year, it was still trying to build the depth of a “juggernaut” program like Friendswood. The Panthers are still not fielding point-scoring swimmers in each event, and much of their roster has been built up the hard way, with athletes with no competitive swim experience before the high school level.

“Each year at tryouts, we kind of tailor them so that we can get as many kids as we can, and then we just build them up from there,” he said. “Our tryout this past year was pretty open, and from there we taught them the strokes and taught them the turns, taught them this, taught them everything. We’re seeing a lot of results, especially with the older kids.”

Posadas said he doesn’t consider himself a vocal leader, and instead, he tries to inspire his teammates with his work ethic.

“Rather than using words, I think actions speak louder than words,” he said. “When I go into the pool, I work as hard as I can, and I try to show them that hard work pays off. And it does. I’ve seen people drop time after practicing with them for hours.”

According to Jones, there is still room for his team to post even better times at the regional meet.

“We have another week of work,” he said. “We’re going to fine-tune some things on those kids. Most of the kids that I had planned to make it past district didn’t taper for this meet, so we’ve been gearing toward regionals the last three or four weeks, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do some more fine-tuning, a little bit more speedwork and clean everything up.”

The Region 6-5A meet will be held this weekend, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, at the Holland Aquatic Center in Magnolia.