The Parkland girls swimming team came home from Bucknell University with a sixth-place finish. The finish matched where the girls placed in the state meet last season.

Sophomore Siena Salvaggio led in the 100-yard freestyle event after the preliminaries and finished .01 seconds off the top pace in the finals, capturing a silver medal by finishing over two-seconds ahead of her 16th place time from last season. Salvaggio just missed another gold medal when she finished .04 seconds behind Council Rock's Tommie Dillione in the 200-yard freestyle.

"Siena is a natural competitor, and a great person," said Parkland head coach Rob Robitaille. "I know that she was hoping for more than second place, however, the gains that she has made this year are immeasurable and the experiences she gained this year will translate to the near future. I'm confident that she will finish what she started this year."

Salvaggio's time of :50.46 was more than a half-second faster than her record time at districts. The PIAA record time in the event was set in 2012 by Hershey's Meaghan Robb, who swam the 100 in :49.01, leaving Salvaggio within a reasonable shot at the record in her two remaining seasons.

Parkland junior Erin Jordan finished ninth in the 500 freestyle. Junior Erika Freeman finished 14th in the 100 backstroke. Salvaggio, Jordan and Freeman teamed with sophomore Tori Connolly for a seventh-place finish in the 400 freestyle relay.

Their team in the 400 freestyle is especially impressive, because none of the competitors are seniors, which means the foursome will have another shot next season.

Of the six teams finishing ahead of Parkland in the 400 relay, five of them had two seniors and just one - North Penn - had just one senior on their team, meaning they'll all have holes to fill.

The girls 200 freestyle team of Salvaggio, Freeman, Jordan and junior Alex Bodnar is also very young and placed seventh in that event.

As a whole, the Parkland program is very young and how many of those young swimmers stepped up at states was especially impressive and is a good sign for the future.

"Like all teams, I believe that this group of young people can go all the way if they choose that they want to, and make the team decision to aggressively go after it," said Robitaille. "If we return the whole team next year, they can definitely make a run at it as many of the teams we faced this year had large graduating classes. It will obviously be very difficult; many of the top teams in the state go one out, one in, so we will have to develop our talent to fill the gaps that we have.

The team from Hershey captured first place on the girls side and La Salle College High School finished with gold medals on the boys side.

In diving, Parkland had three divers competing with senior Josh Anderson finishing 16th in the event and was the highest local finisher in the event. Two freshmen, Chris Lehman and Jon Hansell finished 23rd and 27th respectively.