On Saturday, P.K. Yonge girls swimmer Alessandra Quintana finished top 10 in the state in the backstroke for the second consecutive year.

She followed that up by signing a Division-I scholarship on Monday with Queens University of Charlotte.

“This feels amazing,” Quintana said. “I feel like every athlete’s dream is to go D-I and the fact that I’ve worked so hard to get here just means a lot to me. My coaches have really helped me get here and this is just a really special moment for me and my family.”

Queens, which is located in Charlotte, North Carolina, competes in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

“I just really loved the smaller school in a big city and the coaches are just phenomenal and the team is amazing,” said Quintana, who said the Royals began showing interest at the start of her junior year. “I had a teammate [club teammate Bethany Glen] go to Queens and I reached out to her during my college journey, and she put me in contact with the coach and from then on we’ve been in contact.”

This past weekend at the FHSAA Class 1A State Swimming and Diving Championships in Ocala, she set a personal best of 57.23 in the preliminaries in the backstroke. In the consolation finals, she swam a 57.94.

“Last year I also finished ninth and I was hoping to get a medal in eighth place, but I still improved my time by almost a second, which is really great in swimming,” Quintana said. “I was just happy to be given the opportunity to make it to finals and have a second swim that day.”

Two years ago, Quintana, University of Texas signee Lillie Nesty, Gwen Shahboz, and Talia Herron put their names in the school record book.

The foursome set the school record in the 200-freestyle relay with a time of 1:39.10 in the preliminaries and ended up finishing seventh overall in 1:39.53.

“She (Alessandra) is a hard-nosed swimmer who always gives it her all and she’ll do anything you ask her to do as far as events and she’ll always give 100%,” said P.K. Yonge swimming coach Kara Dawson. “Her leadership really bleeds into everybody else and because she works so hard everybody else kind of steps up as well.”

One of Quintana’s favorite memories was two years ago during the city meet when she raced against one of her club teammates, Gainesville High’s Ava Fuller, who signed with the University of Kentucky.

“We’re both really good swimmers and we raced in the 500-free, and she’s a really good distance swimmer so I really had to dig deep in order to win for P.K., but that’s probably my favorite swim moment,” she said.

Dawson said it was one of her favorite moments too, especially since she texted her before the city championships to let her know she really needed her to compete in the 500, even though it wasn’t her event.

“We had a really strong team, but we weren’t going to score a lot of points in the 500 and so I really needed to put one of our more experienced swimmers in there and she made the most sense with the lineup as far as how many points we were going to score and so I asked her if she would do it,” Dawson said.

She did it, and she won, teaching a lesson about putting the team first.

Quintana, who has placed top 16 at states eight times, has competed on the varsity team since her freshman year.

“She’s going to have a big opportunity and she’s just going to continue to get better,” Dawson said. “I actually looked at the times from her freshman year to her senior year and every year she has gotten faster, and I don’t think she’s done. She’s going to keep getting faster.”