The Emmaus boys and girls swim teams wound up with very similar finishes at the PIAA Swimming and Diving Championships this past weekend at Bucknell University in Lewisburg. Each team had one 13th place finisher in individual events and both teams saw their 200-yard medley relay teams finish in the top 15 places.

On the boys side, Cody Wimmer, was able to come away with a 13th place finish in the 500-yard freestyle event. Wimmer, a junior, finished just over three seconds over his qualifying time in the event. Wimmer faced tough competition in the event, which he won at the District 11 meet earlier this month.

"I knew there was going to be a lot of good competition, obviously, and I didn't deliver my best times today, so it's a little disappointing," said Wimmer, who figures to be one of the team leaders next season in his senior year.

The boys 200-yard medley relay team, comprised of senior Greg Ritchie, juniors Andrew Bond and Robert Bishop and sophomore Carter Paules, captured gold at the district meet and came away with a 14th place finish at states.

To say that the competition in the boys 200 medley event was tough would be an understatement. The two top teams in the event - Upper Dublin in first and La Salle College High School in second - both finished with times that beat the previous state record for the event. Upper Dublin's team finished with a time of 1:31.28, just a little more than a half-second faster than the previous state record time and 23 hundredths of second faster than La Salle.

For the girls, sophomore Morgan Weigner came into the 100-yard breaststroke seeded 18th and was able to improve on her qualifying time by almost a full second, which gave her a 13th place finish in the event. Weigner and fellow sophomore Claire Frank joined seniors Taylor Iobst and Maura Brennan on the girls 200-yard medley relay team and finished 15th in the event at states.

"Overall, I'm happy with how things went today. Of course, we would have liked to finish even better, but we all worked hard this season," said Weigner.

Just like in the boys 200 medley, both of the top two teams in the event broke the previous state record, which was held by the 2009 Emmaus team made up of Allie Roberts, Morgan Oxley, Deidre Geroni and Catherine Carr. The new record holder in the event is Hershey High School, which bested the Emmaus record by six hundredths of a second, just three hundredths of a second ahead of second place North Allegheny.

While Emmaus' finish isn't what coach Tim O'Connor might have hoped for, he was able to use the event as a learning experience for some of his younger swimmers.

"So many have been working for an opportunity to get to this meet and achieved that goal, but they all said it was a different meet than the USA meets they have gone to because of the overall intensity needed to perform," said O'Connor. "We watched a lot of finals swims at night and talked about what we saw.

"It is so important that kids learn for themselves what it will take to succeed; to have the kids figure out what they need to do to be successful at a high level, and in that regard, this year's state meet was a huge success and building block."

O'Connor has a good, young group of swimmers coming along and believes that his teams have a bright future and that next season, their results at the state level could be much different.

"I see that ability to take at least 10 additional swimmers from my roster next year of athletes who did not make states this year, and hopefully improve our standards," said O'Connor. "But as I tell the kids, potential is only a word and well done is better than well said."