Lely Senior Excels in the Pool and in the Classroom

Lely’s Mia Witthoff recently returned from the state swim meet where she and her Trojan teammates set several school records. But the swimming pool is not the only place the athletic senior excels; she’s also second in her class academically and carries an impressive 5.38 weighted GPA.

So, it should come as no surprise that Witthoff has some pretty big-name academic institutions among the schools she is applying to for next fall.

“I applied to ten schools,” Mia Witthoff said. "MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Purdue, University of Colorado Boulder, Florida State, University of Florida and Central Florida. Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech are my top choices. MIT is a reach school, but we’ll see about that. You never know. Engineering has been a focus in my college search."

Engineering is Witthoff’s love. That is one of the things that helped her decide to attend Lely High School.

“We have an engineering program at Lely that I’m quite involved with,” she said. "We have 10 3D printers we acquired through grants with the county. I’ve been putting those together and teaching younger students how to use them. Through the engineering program at Lely, another student and I created an app for the school. It should be available in the app store pretty soon. It’s going to have school news, academic and athletic schedules. I’m in a class called engineering design and development. We create solutions to problems. The engineering program has made me want to study engineering in college.”

Witthoff started her swimming career with coach Kamal Farhat at the Marco YMCA. In fact, she and her record-setting relay team all trained under coach Kamal.

"I’ve been swimming for 10 years,” Witthoff said. "It’s the sport I’ve done all my life. I started with coach Kamal at the YMCA. I swam with him for six or seven years. When I got into high school I joined the high school team, and I switched club teams to the Golden Gate team. 

"I always wanted to make states and finally got there this year. It’s the first time a Lely relay team had made it in four to five years. We made it in the 200-freestyle relay and the 400-freestyle relay. We broke the school record in the 200. It was really cool. We all swam together with coach Kamal. I’ve known them a really long time and we’re all really good friends.”

Witthoff has also been quite involved with the sea turtle program with Rookery Bay.

"I’ve been volunteering at Rookery Bay for the past five years,” she said. "I mainly do the sea turtle monitoring. We go to the islands south of Marco. We identify the nests and put a cage over them so they’re protected from predators. We walk all those beaches. They are a pretty threatened species but their numbers are going up. It’s interesting how different environmental things will affect the number of hatchlings. If there’s a hurricane one year that definitely doesn’t help. It’s been very interesting to learn all that.”

Witthoff said they cage the turtle nests on the islands to protect the eggs from predators, like raccoons.

"Raccoons get the nests a lot,” Witthoff said. "Fire ants will also eat the eggs. Rookery Bay has a little chicken wire cage we put over it. It’s wide enough for the baby sea turtles to get out, but the raccoons can’t get to them. At the end of season, we dig it up and count the amount of hatched and unhatched eggs. Occasionally there will be a live turtle stuck in the nest."

Witthoff enjoys walking the beach at night, boating and kayaking. But for now, she’s waiting to hear where her college studies will take her. What she is sure of is the direction she wants her studies to take her.

“I’m trying to get into renewable energy, or sustainability,” she said. "I’d love to get an engineering degree and work for a renewable energy company. That’s kind of where I’m headed."