The girls swim team has two of their own advancing to State this Friday at Evanston Township High School: junior Kendra Joachim and junior Julia Tanna.

Tanna will be swimming the 50, 100, and 200 freestyle along with the 100 breastroke. Throughout the season, Tanna has shown tremendous effort and incredible times.

“Julia is very hard worker and has great perseverance. She’s ready to defeat any challenge that comes her way,” senior Flynn McClellan said.

Tanna said she is most looking forward to the “calmness and focus right before it is time to dive into the water.”

Tanna will be swimming in the disabilities category, Class B for her freestyle events and Class A for breastroke.

“I really treasure the other people with disabilities that I meet and it will be nice to see some familiar faces,” she said.

Joachim has had a similarly successful season. Coming off a shoulder injury that proved to be very painful, she plans on swimming the 200 freestyle in under one minute and 53 seconds, as well as the 500 freestyle in under five minutes.

She said she is specifically working on underwaters (kicking before the stroke officially starts) in order to return them back to their original ability. Joachim went from being unable to lift her arm above her head to regaining her strength in order to swim streamline.

“It’s hard to be forced to slow down and I felt like I was getting nowhere with PT [physical therapy],” Joachim said. “But it did help to remind me why I swim.”

Her shoulder injury may have stopped her physically, but it didn’t stop her emotionally. Her teammate, senior Grace Spath, said that Joachim is “such a positive light” and “all of the hard work and dedication she has put in is paying off.”