Friday in Mansfield Denton’s swimmers went up against the best in North Texas, coming out of it with five swimmers headed to the state meet in Austin today.

Senior DJ Lang, who committed to the University of Alabama in December, placed first among boys in the 200-yard freestyle. Lang missed first place in the 100-yard freestyle race by just .13 seconds. He was the only boy from Denton to qualify for state.

“Not only am I representing Denton High,” Lang said. “I’m representing more than that.”

The 200-yard freestyle relay team (consisting of Lang, fellow senior Michael Amadi, and juniors Josh Rowell and Tuomas Hyvarinen) was within a second of increasing that number to four.

In the 200-yard medley relay, the Denton team consisting of seniors Kayla McGill and Bri Broussard, junior Rachel Crews, and sophomore Elise Page edged out the second-place Byron Nelson team by .36 seconds.

“I feel like we’re prepared,” McGill said. “Everyone’s swimming fast, and we just broke our own district and school record this past meet. I feel like we have a really good chance of breaking it again and hopefully making it into the top eight.”

 With the same team as last year the girls have moved on to state together for the second time. Fellow member Rachael Crews is just as enthusiastic as her team mate.

“I’m positive that we’ll be in the top eight,” Crews said. “We have a good chance to make it to A-finals. We’ve all improved since last year, so we’ll definitely get farther this time.”