The PIAA Swimming and Diving Championships were held recently at Bucknell University in Lewisburg. Liberty was represented by four swimmers, while Freedom had a pair of divers competing in the competition.

The highest finisher among the group was Liberty’s Malcolm Collins, who swam in two individual events and was also a member of the 200-yard medley relay team. In the 200-yard individual medley, Collins was a little off his district time and finished in 10th place in the preliminaries with a time of 1:54.17. The finish earned him a return to swim in the finals where he dropped time to finish with a 1:53.80 and hold on to the 10th spot in the standings, earning points for the Liberty team. Collins finished just 0.01 seconds out of ninth in the preliminaries and was just 0.12 seconds out of eighth, which would have guaranteed him a medal.

The opening day actually started with Collins joining senior classmate Wade Wu, junior David Gabrielle, and freshman Christian Hackett to form Liberty’s 200-yard medley relay team. In their preliminary round swim, the team moved from being seeded 31st to finishing 13th with a time of 1:36.80. They returned to swim in the finals and fell to 14th even though they lowered their time to 1:36.42. Haverford passed them in the finals to steal away 13th with a time of 1:36.28.

On the second day of competition, Collins swam the 100-yard breaststroke and came into the event seeded third. Unfortunately, he finished ninth overall in the preliminary round swimming a 57.30 which was 0.52 seconds slower than his district time. He returned in the finals and fell to 14th with a time of 57.34 seconds.

“I would say I am pretty happy about things overall. This morning could have been a little quicker to get myself into a medal position. I was seeded third, so ninth overall in the morning wasn’t very good but that was the best that I could do,” said the Liberty senior who was making his third trip to states.

Freedom had a pair of divers competing in the 3A diving competition with Cody Smith performing on Wednesday and Hayden Taylor competing in the 3A girls’ diving on Thursday.

Smith, a sophomore, was competing in his first state championship meet and finished his first five dives with a score of 155.00, which left him in 21st. Only the top 20 divers continue into the next round and Smith fell just 1.95 points behind Alexander Gabbard from Erie High School for the opportunity to continue and compete for a medal. At districts, Smith had finished second to Parkland’s Bradley Kunz, who finished 12th at states.

Taylor, a sophomore, had better fortunes when she dove on day two. After the first five dives Taylor was in second place with a score of 197.80 and trailed Conestoga’s Avery Hillier by just 6.7 points. Over the next three dives, Taylor fell to fifth but was still in contention to earn a medal. Taylor ended the meet with a final score of 383.85 to finish seventh overall.

Like Smith, Taylor was competing for the first time at states and enjoyed the experience.

“I felt a little nervous coming in but I was able to put that aside and it got better as the meet went on. My goal coming in was just to medal and it’s an amazing feeling having a medal around my neck right now,” said Taylor. “I allowed it to get into my head a little seeing myself near the top and I think that it affected my dives a little.”

Liberty’s boys’ team finished 35th out of 55 schools in the team standings with 16 points. Emmaus (36 points) was the highest finishing local boys’ team followed by Whitehall (16.5) and Liberty. Parkland tied for 51st with five points and Nazareth tied for 53rd with four points. District 1 had three of the top four teams with North Penn leading the way with 204 points and district foe Conestoga finishing second with 183 points. North Allegheny (166.5 points) broke the string and was followed by Springfield, also out of District 1, with 163 points.

On the girls’ side Freedom finished with 12 points, tied for 40th in the team standings, finishing ahead of Emmaus (four points), tied for 55th, and Stroudsburg, who tied for 55th with one point. Parkland was the highest finishing team in the girls’ competition with 92 points that left them in seventh overall. East Stroudsburg South was 21st with 33 points. The overall team champion was North Allegheny who had a team score of 211. Upper Dublin (203 points) was second and Hatboro-Horsham (164 points) was third.