The Northampton swim and dive team traveled to Nazareth on Thursday evening, January 20 for a tri-meet against Nazareth High School and Southern Lehigh High School. While the overall team scores from the two larger varsity teams may have overshadowed the Kids, the night was not without some great Northampton performances.

Among the highlights was senior Olivia Szerencsits with a first-place finish in both the 200 freestyle (2:01.66) and the 500 freestyle (5:23.12) events. In the 200 freestyle, Szerencsits outpaced her competition with definitively faster splits at every turn and claimed victory in the event by about 3 seconds. In the 500 freestyle Szerencsits gave almost a mirror performance, claiming the lead early with an increasingly faster pace and touching the wall first over 3 seconds before Madison Camden from Southern Lehigh.

Another highlight of the evening was the Northampton divers. Led by coach Todd Lerch, the impressive diving duo of Isabella Kish and Boden Burkhart both claimed victory by a sizable margin over Nazareth. The odds were stacked against the small NHS team with 3 opposing divers from Nazareth in the girls 1 meter event and 2 Nazareth divers challenging Boden in the boys 1 meter. Hours of practice and perfecting paid off on Thursday night however as Isabella bested Nazareth by a score of 161.80 (second place was awarded to Mila Wasilewski of Nazareth with a total score of 132.05). Boden would also spring past his competition and claim first with a total score of 177.35, a sizable margin over second place finisher Gabriel Smith from Nazareth who achieved a total score of 117.40.

Rounding out some strong swims for Northampton, Gabriella Oswald put up an impressive fight in the 100 freestyle event claiming 4th place with a time of 1:05.53 just 3 tenths of a second ahead of fifth place finisher Victoria De Bruyn from Nazareth. Ryan Franke claimed fourth place in the boys 200 freestyle event with a time of 2:03.32 and Micah Sommons from Northampton captured third place in the Boys 500 freestyle in 6:23.08.