Brendan McCourt won back-to-back state diving championships for Emmaus in 2019 and 2020.

Since then, the Hornets have not had a diver qualify to perform at the PIAA championships at Bucknell University. On Saturday, it appeared that the string may be broken as Doug Cornish put on a strong showing at the District 11 3A diving championship held at Emmaus High School.

Cornish came up just shy of earning a trip to states as he finished third in boys diving. In girls diving two Emmaus divers competed as they looked to earn a trip to states as well.

In the girls competition, Freedom’s Hayden Taylor took home the gold medal at districts for the second straight year and was also named the Dennis McGinley Award winner as the top overall diver in districts with a score of 485.40.

A pair of Parkland divers – Johanna Cook and Samantha Schultz – finished second and third respectively.

Emmaus’ Elle Bagley finished eighth in the competition with a final score of 312.10 and Maddy Roberts was 13th collecting 283.00 points in the district meet.

Bagley’s performance was an improvement over her 10th place finish last season and Roberts, a freshman, was competing in her first district diving meet.

In the boys’ competition, Cornish had his highest scoring dive in the second round when he nailed a forward double somersault pike for a 47.15 score that vaulted him into second place just behind Northampton’s Alex Szeplaki. Cornish’s third dive in the 11 dive competition was another impressive performance on a forward 2 ½ somersault tuck that was awarded a score of 43.20. Unfortunately for the Emmaus junior, Freedom’s Cody Smith owned the round with a 51.25 on a reverse 1 ½ somersault, 1 ½ twist that carried a high degree of difficulty and was near flawless.

The round put Smith at the top of the standings as Cornish maintained his second place standing through the competition’s first three rounds.

Cornish looked to work his way closer to Smith, but the eventual gold medal winner again put up a score over 50 in round five when he completed a reverse 1 ½ somersault pike for a score 51.60, 10 points more than Cornish received for his back 1 ½ somersault pike in the round. Smith would later add another dive that went over the 50 point plateau on his way to winning the gold medal after a second place finish last season. The difference pushed Smith’s lead in the competition to 216.00 to 202.15 over Cornish in the standings.

“I always feel like I do better in an event if I don’t know where I’m at in the standings,” said Cornish. “I just can focus more on my dives and what I need to do to complete each dive, so I knew I was doing pretty well but didn’t know exactly who was where.”

As Smith continued to improve on his lead, Cornish suddenly faced pressure from Charlie Epstein, who had slowly been moving closer to Cornish in the points total. Epstein’s score of 46.80 in round six moved him into second place just 7.30 points ahead of Cornish.

Both Cornish and Epstein soon were being challenged by Parkland’s Brad Kunz, who leapfrogged Cornish in the eighth round while Epstein fell out of the top three in the round with a low scoring dive.

Kunz held off Cornish in the later rounds by scoring dives over 40 points on three of his last four dives to finish in second place behind Smith and grab the final ticket to compete in states and win the district gold medal.

“I’d say my double pike went pretty well and my back 1 ½ dives were pretty good, too, so I had three dives that I was really happy with,” said Cornish. “There are a lot of good competitors here, a lot of good people and I wasn’t really sure where I would wind up coming into today.”

Cornish’s third-place finish was a big jump from his 10th place finish in last season’s competition, which was won by Epstein.

“I have worked hard to try to move up there and I wasn’t expecting to get third, but it’s a nice surprise,” said Cornish.

Smith and Kunz will compete in states next month at Bucknell University with Cornish serving as an alternate if either of them are unable to compete.