![Broadcast, yearbook and newspaper combined for 66 Interscholastic League Press Conference awards this year. Yearbook won 43, newspaper won 14 and broadcast took home nine. “I think [the ILPC awards] are a great way to give the kids some acknowledgement for all of their hard work,” newspaper and yearbook adviser Paige Hert said. “They typically spend the year covering everyone else’s big moments, so it’s really cool for them to be celebrated so many times and in so many different ways.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/edited-ILPC.jpg)
![Looking down at his racket, junior Hasun Nguyen hits the green tennis ball. Hasun has played tennis since he was 9 years old, and he is on the varsity team. "I feel like it’s not really appreciated in America as much, but [tennis] is a really competitive and mentally challenging sport,” Nguyen said. “I’m really level-headed and can keep my cool during a match, and that helps me play a bit better under pressure.” Photo by Kyra Cox](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/hasun.jpg)
![Bringing her arm over her head and taking a quick breath, junior Lauren Lucas swims the final laps of the 500 freestyle at the regionals swimming competition on date. Lucas broke the school’s 18-year-old record for the 500 freestyle at regionals and again at state with a time of 4:58.63. “I’d had my eye on that 500 record since my freshman year, so I was really excited to see if I could get it at regionals or districts,” Lucas said. “ State is always a really fun experience and medaling for the first time was really great. It was a very very tight race, [so] I was a bit surprised [that I medaled]. [There were] a lot of fast girls at the meet in general, [and] it was like a dogfight back and forth, back and forth.” Photo by Kaydence Wilkinson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Kaydence-2.7-23-edit-2.jpg)
![As her hair blows in the wind, senior Brianna Grandow runs the varsity girls 5K at the cross country district meet last Thursday. Grandow finished fourth in the event and led the varsity girls to regionals with a third place placement as a team. “I’m very excited [to go to regionals],” Grandow said. “I’m excited to race in Corpus Christi, and we get to go to the beach, so that’s really awesome.” Photo by Addison Bruce](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/brianna.jpg)
She waits in anticipation for the phone call that could change her life. Thinking of all the hard work that she has put into her training and the people that have motivated her to get to where she is today, she knows she is ready to start her future swimming journey. Then, the phone rings and she is welcomed into the Longhorn family.
Junior student athlete Ella Mongenel committed to the University of Texas on the Women’s Swim and Dive team this November. She has participated in competitive swimming since she was three years old and competed on club swim team since she was eight years old. Although Mongenel committed in November, she has been in contact with the UT coaches since June.
“The recruiting process has been a really long process,” Mongenel said. “There were lots of phone calls I had to make with the college coaches. I also had to take recruiting trips where I had to go to the school and really get to see the campus and get to know the coaches and have them watch me swim.”
Throughout the course of getting recruited, Mongenel was in constant communication with the University coaches in order to finalize her commitment. According to Mongenel, the swimming community is small, so she had already known the coaches throughout her years of club swimming and swimming camps; this helped her stay connected and later commit.
“They reached out to me and I continued talking to them throughout the months [leading up to my commitment],” Mongenel said. “They would come to certain competitions and they would watch me swim. I was able to take an official recruiting swimming trip to UT and got to see the college swimmers and really get to know them. I even got to train with them for a day, so that was a really cool experience to see the academic and swimming side of UT.”
Mongenel competes at Nitro Swimming, where she mainly competes in sprinting heats, which includes the 50 meter freestyle, 100 meter freestyle but does not exclude participating in other events such as the 200 meter individual medley and 100 meter breastroke. Mongenel is continuing to train at Nitro, where she practices every morning and afternoon.
“I am definitely training a lot,” Mongenel said. “I am training morning and at night so I definitely go back and forth between academics and sports. In practice, I do a lot of technique based stuff, endurance training, aerobic work, stroke training; just a little bit of everything”
Mongenel was a member of the 2023 5A State Championship Girls Swim and Dive Team, where she contributed to the achievement with a 1st place in the 50 meter freestyle and 2nd place in the 100 meter Freestyle. Although Mongenel is only competing in club swim this year, she plans on rejoining the school’s Girls Swim and Dive team for her senior year.
“One of my favorite memories is winning state with the girls,” Mongenel said. “It is my proudest accomplishment for high school [career]. I really enjoyed the senior class of 2023 and I felt like we were very close and really bonded. Everything clicked at state and we were all very motivated to accomplish big dreams for CPHS.”
Mongenel’s love of swimming began when she was very young, and as she got older swim became more than just her love for the sport but also helped her get into her dream school. She has now been competing with various club organizations for nine years of her swimming career.
“From a very young age my mom put me into swim,” Mongenel said. “She wanted to make sure I learned it as a basic survival skill and I fell in love with it. I stuck it out and continued to fall in love with it. Now I have been doing club for about nine years and been through a few club programs.”
According to Mongenel, her commitment is not finalized until her senior year but she is eager for her future swimming career as a Longhorn. She said the people around her such as her teammates and her family have been a heavy influence on how she has gotten to where she is today.
“To young swimmers,” Mongenel said. “Don’t be so hard on yourselves. Trust the process and don’t overthink everything that you can’t control. Focus on the things you can control and have fun with the sport. You can’t swim forever so make the best memories you possibly can with the teammates around you.”
