Freedom divers Hayden Taylor and Cody Smith scored first-place points in the Patriots’ swim and dive meet against Dieruff on Dec. 10 at Freedom.

Taylor, who shows a wealth of physical strength on the board, accumulated 252.90 points for first place for the girls.

Taylor’s first dive, an inward dive pike, received 7 1/2 points from all three judges, and her inward 1 1/2 pike received 6 1/2, 7, and 7 1/2.

“Last meet and this meet, I dropped them in very nice, and it was my highest scoring dive, and I felt really good with them,” Taylor said.

Taylor performs the same five dives most meets, and her required dive changes each week.

“Over the summer, I made my difficulty for each dive a lot higher,” she said. “My 1 1/2s used to be in tuck, and now I got them in pike, and my last two dives are brand-new for me this season.”

Taylor’s new dives are a back 1 1/2 somersault 1 1/2 twist and a front 2 1/2 somersault pike with a 2.6 degree of difficulty.

“Great start,” said Freedom diving coach Mark Parry of Taylor. “We need to clean up some of the middle dives a little bit. That way, when we get to those end-of-round dives, we can rely on the higher points of the middle dives to carry us to the finish line.”

Smith, who gets remarkable height on his dives, accumulated 247.50 points for first place for the boys.

“The last two, I had questionable approaches but then kind of saved the dive, and I was wondering what the judges would think about that,” Smith said. “The average was pretty solid, but the individual ones were such a spread that it’s always...never gonna be happy with that, the point spread.”

Smith’s highest-scored dive was his inward 1 1/2 pike for a 7, 7, and 7 1/2.

“That’s typically one of my most consistent dives. It has a solid difficulty, so it was my highest scoring dive at this meet and last meet,” he said. “My last dive, my front 2 1/2 pike, the one I hurt my foot on in warm-ups, I felt really good about.”

That particular dive has a 2.6 degree of difficulty.

“Today was the best meet that I’ve seen from him,” said Coach Parry. “We’ve been working really hard on improving his degree of difficulty and the amount of dives he has over the 2.0 degree of difficulty. We’ve also been working on putting those dives in cleanly. He had some of those last season, but they were rough going in, but now he’s dropping them in for higher than fives and sixes.”

Smith and Taylor are on their way to setting the school records with Taylor possibly setting a new pool record as well.

“Both of them are 12 points off the record tonight, so we’re hoping later on this week that we can be record-breakers,” said Parry.

Addie Schmid 139.20 placed third for the Patriot girls with a 139.20 score, and Emma Pitsilos came in fourth with a score of 135.70.