Emmaus swimming coach Tim O’Connor is generally a happy type of guy. He’s slow to show anger and usually takes things as they come.

Last March when the Class 3A state finals were canceled as the coronavirus overtook the country, he accepted it and congratulated his team on its performance.

This season when the East Penn Conference scheduled all its swim meets in virtual style, he accepted it and pushed his team to put together the best times possible.

But when it was announced this season that instead of 24 swimmers qualifying for each event at districts, only take the top eight would be allowed to compete, he wasn’t at all happy.

“I expressed my disappointment last week that they couldn’t find a way to have us go to 16,” said O’Connor. “We’re the only district in the state of Pennsylvania that doesn’t have double-digits for qualifiers. Yet we’re in the top half of the state in regard to competitiveness as a district, but we couldn’t find a way to get to 16 and it bugs me.

“With a freshman or a sophomore, as a coach, you can angle that and say ‘listen, if you truly love the sport, get back to work and don’t put yourself in a situation where you’re not in that top eight’. For a senior who has been in this meet before and when everything shook out, they were one or two spots out, that’s kind of tough.”

Monday night, District 11 relented and allowed for the top 16 qualifiers to swim at districts, doubling the number of eligible swimmers. Somehow, the district was able to work around obstacles that had earlier forced it to limit the numbers to eight.

Because of COVID restrictions, the Parkland natatorium could only have a total of 46 people – swimmers, coaches, medical personnel, officials, scoreboard operators and others - on the deck of the pool.

They could accommodate another 75 people, including media and other personnel in the balcony seating area. It had already been decided that fans wouldn’t be admitted to the event, however, there will be a livestream of the event online.

For Emmaus, the change allows eight more swimmers who were listed as alternates to advance to districts and others who finished just out of the alternates level will also now qualify.

Few could be happier than EHS seniors Davin Glynn and Dylan Strella, who will now get to compete in their final District 11 meet. Glynn will now compete in both the 200 and 500-yard freestyle events while Strella now has a bid in the 100-yard freestyle.

Juniors Bobby Perose (200-yard IM, 100-yard backstroke) and James Manley (100-yard butterfly) will now also qualify.

On the girls’ side, two sophomores and two freshmen picked up guaranteed spots. Sophomores Catherine Sirignano will now swim in the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard backstroke and Hailey Reinhard will swim in the 200-yard freestyle.

Freshmen Georgia Magditch will join Sirignano in the 100-yard backstroke and will also now compete in the 200-yard IM and Izzy Sparaco will be a part of the 50-yard freestyle.

The rest of the new qualifiers will be announced this week.

O’Connor pointed out that other districts were expanding their swimming meets and qualifiers partly because both the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) classify swimming as a safe event.

Locally though, meets were still being held virtually and the strict limitations on swimmers was still in place.

“What has happened in a lot of the other districts is it was more of a collaborative effort between school officials and swimming coaches,” said O’Connor. “The reality is that principals and athletic directors many times don’t always completely understand the sport, so they talk to coaches to get input.”

After districts, the focus shifts to the PIAA meet where the field will also be downsized. Instead of the top two from each event going to states, only the gold medal winner qualifies. States have also been moved from Bucknell University to Cumberland Valley High School.

Some people still have memories of last year’s state meet when things were shut down after the 3A preliminaries on the second day of the meet. Swimmers didn’t get to compete in finals for 3A medals, having to instead settle for where they finished in preliminaries and all the 2A competition was first postponed and then canceled.

Senior Connor Shriver remembers how that affected him.

“Everything was going great for us, we slammed it the first day and slammed it in preliminaries on day two and then after that session we were told it was just going to be time finals,” said Shriver. “We had made it back for the second session and I was going to be swimming in the 400-yard freestyle relay and that never happened.

“It was frustrating. I’m hoping to make it back this year because we have some good individual swimmers and some really good relays and I think we’re all excited.”