Henig sets stage for epic M-A career

While Henig is a long shot to make the U.S. Olympic team bound for Rio in August, she has very real aspirations to qualify for the Junior Pan Pacific Championships to be held in Maui, Hawaii in late August. But her sights are still set on contending for the 2020 Olympic squad.

“Well, hopefully I’ll make it in 2020 in four years,” Henig said. “I’m super excited. I can’t wait to keep swimming after high school and head to college and see where my swimming career goes from there.”

In the meantime, settling for Daily Journal Girls’ Swimmer of the Year honors will have to suffice. In our relatively small pond of San Mateo County, Henig made the decision of who to bestow the award upon quite easy. Not only did she capture two gold medals and a silver at the Central Coast Section championships, she went on claim two silver medals at the state championships.

And the sophomore broke a slew of M-A records along the way.

A transfer from Castilleja, Henig landed at M-A this season much to the delight of head coach Brett Koerten. With a loaded team of underclassmen, the Lady Bears had taken 12th place at CCS in 2015. With the addition of Henig, the team climbed to fifth place this season.

“We knew going into the year we were going to have a solid girls team based on last year’s swimming team,” Koerten said. “Then when we found out Izzi was coming to M-A, we were thrilled.”

With Henig out front, the Bears kept rolling into the state championships, where they took 12th as a team. Not only did Henig contribute two second-place finishes in her individual races in the 50- and 100-yard free, she helped earn points as part of two relay teams with a ninth-place finish in the 200 free relay and 12th in the 400 free relay, totaling four events on the day.

Henig’s two individual races were both thrillers. In the 50 free, she locked up with fellow sophomore Elise Garcia of Crean Lutheran-Irvine, who had set the state meet record in the preliminaries with a time of 22.64 seconds. Then in the finals, Garcia out-touched Henig by seven one-hundredths of a second, with Henig tabbing a time of 22.82 seconds.

“It was a super close race and I was happy with how I did,” Henig said. “I was disappointed that I didn’t win. But I hope to go back and try to beat her next year.”

Henig won’t get another shot at taking down Ayala-Chino Hills senior Kenisha Liu in the 100 free. While the two swam equal times in the preliminaries, Henig once again got out-touched at the wall in the finals, falling shy of Liu’s gold-medal finish by 15 one-hundredths of a second while finishing in 49.16 seconds.

“It was a good race,” Henig said. “She pushed me faster. Once again, I kind of have mixed feelings. But once again I feel like I’m going to come back next year.”

According to Koerten, Henig’s good-natured reaction to getting out-touched in both races is legit. She’s a competitor who is more concerned with the process than the result. And at the end of the day, she just loves racing, Koerten said. That doesn’t mean it won’t fuel her to get over the top next season.

“Obviously she wants to win and if she doesn’t win it’s not going to sit well with her,” Koerten said. “But knowing she’s going to be able to race again next year and get payback … that really gets her fired up.”

In the context of M-A program history, however, Henig can only improve on her own marks. She contributed five new school records this year, setting new all-time marks in the 50 free (22.79 seconds), the 100 free (49.09 seconds) and the 200 free (1 minute, 49.57 seconds).

She also was part of two record-breaking relay teams, combining with Sophie Murff, Maddie Worden and Kate Denend for a time of 1:34.98 in the 200 free relay. And along with Murff, Denend and Haley Arrington, she helped set the best program mark for the 400 free relay in 3:28.28.

And, keep in mind, Henig waged her war on the M-A record books after having to sit out the first half of the season due to CCS transfer rules. Koerten already knew what he had in Henig, having seen her swim at Castilleja as a freshman. But it didn’t really hit him until she debuted for M-A midway through the season.

“The first meet she swam in PAL, obviously I had already seen her race … but putting her in the 50 freestyle, she dove in and was already a half a body length ahead of everybody else and I was like, ‘Wow, she’s good,’” Koertin said.

Yet Henig is still just a sophomore. She has yet to give serious consideration to her college plans, outside of knowing she wants to swim at a Division I school. While she ranks 62nd in the nation in the 50-meter free, only four women ahead of her on the list are her age or younger.

In this sense, she is a perfect fit for an M-A team that is young as well. And while it is too soon to predict the Daily Journal Girls’ Swimmer of the Year for 2017 and ‘18, don’t be surprised if Henig corners the market on the award for the foreseeable future.

“Even though she was only a sophomore this year, having swam at CCS and state (as a freshman), that brings a lot of experience to the team, which was helpful because we do have a really young team,” Koerten said. “I felt like we always had a great girls team and then Izzi just took us over the top.”