The best swimmers in all of Texas anxiously wait as the cold water rolls down their silky smooth legs, wondering whether or not their time was a fraction of a second ahead or behind of the competition. The best of the Dallas Jesuit swimming team traveled down to the Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center in Austin, Texas for the UIL Texas 6A State Championship meet on February 19 and 20 for the prelims and finals.
Of all the best swimmers in the state, one fantastic swimmer stood out: Jesuit’s very own Brendan Feehery ’16. Feehery has been absolutely lighting it up throughout the whole season, making teammates like Abbas Hussain ’17 exclaim that,”He’s definitely one of the fastest guys I’ve ever seen. Absolutely incredible how that guy can swim.” Flying through the water, Feehery swam the 200 yard IM and the 100 yard breaststroke exceptionally well during the weekend.
On day one in the prelims, Feehery exhibited his phenomenal strength by earning first in both of his events! With times of 1:49.42 in the 200 IM and 56.18 in the 100 breaststroke, it’s easy to see how he won. With the narrow margin of victory of 0.7 seconds, one can see how every single movement, breath, and thought can affect a swimmer’s time. Feehery looked ahead to the next day and set his sights on replicating his results from the prelims to bring home a state titles for Jesuit in two different events.
With the culmination of an entire high school career up ahead, Feehery must have felt an enormous amount of stress. Only beating the runner up by less than a second, Feehery had to make sure that he was at his best for the biggest races of the season. First he lined up for the IM, completing the first 100 yards in 30.92 seconds, the best of all the swimmers in that event. Then in the final 100 yards of the race, he held off strong efforts from sophomore Alberto Gomez of Woodlands High School, who beat Feehery in the final 100, but couldn’t overcome Feerhey’s lead overall, allowing the Jesuit swimmer to earn the big win! After the huge victory, Feehery had some time to rest before he was scheduled to swim in the 100 breaststroke, his last event as a Ranger. Following his stellar performance in the prelims, the entire community hoped that he could pull out another win for the day. He started off the race with a blazing fast time of 26.50 seconds in the first 50, with seven other swimmers also completing the fist half fractions of a second in front of or behind him. In the hotly contested race, Feehery threw it into high gear and cranked out an incredible final 50 of the race with a time of 29.71! But, alas, Austin Westlake’s Matthew Willenb ’18 managed to best Feehery by 0.01 seconds, or a hundredth of a second. With the difference between first and second that slim, fellow swimmer Abbas Hussain ’17 could only think to say, “Man, that was close.” On the weekend, the win and the second place finish establish Feehery as one of the best swimmers that Jesuit has ever seen and made the school realize how blessed we are to have him in our community.
If you see any members of the swim team in the halls, be sure to congratulate them on their awesome season this year. And if you see Brendan Feehery, be especially sure to congratulate him on his fantastic state championship meet! Stay tuned to the Roundup for extensive coverage of all of Jesuit’s diverse sports and variety of clubs.
