Girls Swimmer of the Year: Kat Simonovic

School: Mesa Mountain View

Year: Senior.

College choice: Undecided.

Season recap: Simonovic, who has dual citizenship with Serbia and the United States, captured her fourth consecutive 200-yard freestyle state championship, coming close to the state record with a time of 1 minute, 47.22 seconds in the Division I championships at the Mesa Skyline Aquatic Center. She entered the finals with the fifth-fastest time in the preliminaries. She also came back in the 100-yard butterfly and won that. It was an event she finished second in at state during her freshman year. She won seven individual state championships during her career, winning titles in the 100 and 500 free, showing her ability to perform well in sprints and in distances.

Simonovic’s comments: “For the 200 free, I didn’t have too much pressure on me. I was in shape. It gave me motivation (the fifth place in preliminaries). It was cool knowing I’m one of the 10 in Arizona histyory to do that (win a state championship in the same event four straight years). I surprised myself in the fly. I had not trained much in it. But I wanted to do it, and redeem myself from my freshman year.”

Coach Glen Coy comments: “She’s been pretty much the anchor of our program since we started. We could always count on her. Whatever we needed to do for the relays, she would help out. She could swim all of the strokes. It’s been pretty incredible coaching her here. We’re going to miss her.”