Hayden Slaski wanted to compete in high school diving competitions, but Northwestern Lehigh does not have a swimming and diving team.

In order to compete, Slaski caught on with the Parkland team to workout and get instruction and compete against other high school divers. While his scores do not count toward Parkland’s team score, they do count toward qualifying him for districts, which he was able to do.

That led him to competing against other divers from the 2A classification in the District 11 Diving championship Saturday at Emmaus High School.

The Northwestern freshman walked away with a gold medal around his neck and a ticket to compete at states, which will be held next month at Bucknell University.

“It feels great to be a part of Parkland’s team. It’s a dream come true,” said Slaski. “The guys at Parkland are basically my family and I just love them so much. It’s also close enough that it still feels like home and it’s not an issue to get there.”

Slaski and Pottsville’s Adam Klinger were locked in a battle for the top spot from their first dive on, but Slaski was just off Klinger’s pace throughout the early rounds.

Slaski had an off dive in the fifth round and fell 6.80 points behind Klinger going into the final six rounds. Knowing he had ground to make up, Slaski went right to work in round six and nailed a forward somersault with one twist for a score of 34.20, his highest of the competition at that point.

His dive helped close the gap to just .65 points.

Slaski remained the pursuer until round nine when he put pressure on Klinger with a 29.25 score on an inward dive pike. When his turn came, Klinger executed a reverse somersault tuck for a 25.60 reward from the judges as Slaski took his first lead in the meet with a 2.80 advantage.

In the tenth round, Slaski stretched his lead to 14.80, but scored just a 14.95 on his 11th and final dive, opening the door for Klinger to take the lead.

Klinger was unable to take advantage and finished with a 300.20 score on the day, while Slaski took gold with a 309.55.

“I was a little worried that he would pass me on that last dive, but fortunately I had the really good dive in round 10 and it gave me enough of a margin,” explained Slaski.

Slaski and Klinger will both compete in the PIAA Diving championship, which will be held at Bucknell University. The boys’ 2A diving finals will be on March 15th.