The Parkland boys swimming and diving team won the team title at districts thanks to the depth of its team.

While the Trojans did not collect any gold medals, they did collect a number of second, third, and fourth-place medals and added team points by having multiple swimmers finish in the top 16 swimmers.

The formula worked perfectly and snapped Emmaus’ 16-year hold on the team championship.

However, depth is not always rewarded at states as only gold medal winners are guaranteed spots at the PIAA meet at Bucknell University. Other spots are filled based on times, so Parkland had one swimmer reach states in three individual events and one relay team head for Bucknell.

Senior Dannik Khais competed in both the 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard freestyle and finished 24th and 29th respectively in the two events. Pedro Teran swam in the 200-yard freestyle and finished 27th with a time of 1:47.06.

Parkland put a young group of swimmers into the 400-yard freestyle relay with freshmen Dominic Faenza and Jacob Piccini joining sophomore Thomas Price and Khais, a senior. The team was not able to improve upon its district time of 3:14.98 that earned it silver medals. The foursome finished with a time of 3:16.10 to place 24th in the preliminary round on Thursday.

The Trojans did add some team points thanks to the efforts of diver Bradley Kunz, who finished 12th in the 3A boys’ diving championship. Kunz captured a gold medal in districts and finished the PIAA meet with a final score of 367.

After the first five dives, Kunz was seeded fifth with a score of 178.35 and fell to 12th after three more rounds. From there he was able to hold off other divers looking to move up and was able to hang onto the 12th spot to collect team points.

North Penn High School won the boys’ team championship with 204 points. Among local teams, Emmaus finished 17th with 36 points, Whitehall collected 16.5 points to finish 34th, just ahead of Liberty with 16 points. Parkland finished tied with Warwick for 51st place with five points and Nazareth was 53rd with four points to round out the local teams standings.