After a year of virtual meets, the energy of the rivalry between Parkland and Emmaus returned with the teams lane-to-lane and fans in the bleachers at the Parkland High School Natatorium. The Trojan boys team looked to move to 3-0 on the season but Emmaus came in strong and swam away with a 123-60 win.

Parkland had first place finishes in two events against Emmaus.

In the diving competition, senior Ethan Radio continued his dominance with a final score of 264.05, comfortably ahead of second-place diver and teammate Ryan Beltrame, while Parkland’s Bradley Kunz, a freshman, placed third in the event.

The Trojans also grabbed a first-place finish in the 100 breaststroke when Nick Zaffiro finished just over a second and a half ahead of Emmaus’ Ryan DeJohn.

It was a big day for Zaffiro, a senior, who also helped lead the 200-yard medley and 200-yard freestyle relay teams to second-place finishes. Luke Willard and Anshul Dadayyapally were with Zaffiro on both relay teams. Harrison Kim was the fourth member of the medley team with Marcus Moreef taking that spot on the 200 freestyle squad.

“Their guys are the usual Emmaus team,” said coach Rob Robitaille. “If we had a 10-lane pool they could have come out five deep in almost every event because they have so much depth.”

Willard was the only other Parkland swimmer to finish in the top two in an individual event when he finished second in the 500 freestyle, a little over one-second behind the winning pace. Willard, who is also a senior, took third place in the 200-yard freestyle event and Kim finished third in the 100-breaststroke.

The Trojans opened the year with road meets at Pocono Mountain West and Stroudsburg. Parkland downed the Cavaliers 129-32 and then finished off the Mounties 67-27. The team is off until after the New Year when they will again be on the road against Dieruff on January 6 and then compete in the Bucknell Invitational two days later.

“It’s always good when these two teams get together,” Robitaille said. “The key is that these kids know each other very well and they train together year-round a lot more and they are around each other a lot more. It grows the quality because the kids from each team push each other to do better in training and the same thing happens when we go head-to-head. It’s a great thing to see.”

Following the meet, the two teams gathered in the warm-up pool for a joint celebration and a photo of the two teams together.