For the first half of the District 11 Diving Championships this past Saturday, it looked like Whitehall's Kailyn Beil wouldn't only medal, but would be heading to the state competition at Bucknell University. Unfortunately for Beil, Parkland's Maddy Hain and Emmaus' Anna Overholts put on a late charge and squeezed Beil out of the PIAA Championships and into a fourth place finish.

Beil, who is the only diver in the Whitehall program and trains at Lafayette College, nailed her third dive of the day for a 41.4 and moved from fourth to second, where she would stay until a couple lower scores on her sixth and seventh dives allowed Hain and Overholts to catch her. Beil battled back, but was unable to make up ground and wound up with a medal for her fourth place finish, but missed the cut for the state meet.

"I'm pretty disappointed, but I'm really glad that the top three made it and I just wish them good luck," said Beil after receiving her medal.

Beil, who is a senior at Whitehall, was especially happy that her friend and club teammate Kelsey Jehl, who attends Easton High School finished first in the event, capturing gold and leading the District 11 divers into states.

"We train together with our club team, Boardbenders, at Lafayette," said Beil, who was among the first to congratulate Jehl on the victory. Jehl finished second in last year's event and fifth in 2012.

While Beil admitted to being somewhat disappointed, she made an impressive rise in the standings after a 12th place district finish in 2013 and a sixth place finish in this year's Lehigh Valley Conference meet.

"I thought I did very well. I thought I could have done some of my dives better, but overall, I think I did very well," said Beil of her performance in districts.

Late in the event, Beil was still battling to finish in the top three and had some of her strongest dives still to come. Her scores weren't quite where she had hoped and she fell short, finishing 20 points out of third.

"I did feel some nerves coming into my last dives, because those are my strong ones and I just wanted to hit them and hoped to get good scores from them," noted Beil.