Freedom High School divers, Madison Young and John McGinty, placed fifth at the East Penn Conference Diving Championships on Feb. 7 at Parkland High School.

McGinty's first of 11 dives was a front one-and-a-half tuck, and his last was a front two-and-a-half tuck.

"I was pretty happy about the forward two-and-a-half because I didn't practice it, and I got fives. I thought I was going to get twos and threes," he said.

McGinty's best dive of the day was an inward dive pike on which he received 8.5s across the board.

"I got good height, went over the board, and ripped the dive," said McGinty.

Coach Jeff Zettlemoyer was very pleased with McGinty's performance.

"John would have gotten even higher if we hadn't made a mistake on the tenth dive," Zettlemoyer said.

McGinty and his coach changed his last two dives the day before the meet, but the change did not reflect on the judges' computers, so McGinty actually failed the tenth dive because he did the wrong one.

Putting that behind him, McGinty is looking forward to Freedom's meet against Liberty this week, and districts the week after.

"I'll probably be working on my more difficult dives, like my two-and-a-half twister, but other than that, my dives are good. I'll just do a little tweaking," said McGinty.

Young, who continues to make huge progress this season, including breaking Freedom's team record for diving last week with 264.50 points, received a score of 434.80. McGinty's score was unavailable as of Press deadlines.

Zettlemoyer said, "Madison is training harder. She comes to my practices, and she goes to Lafayette. She's willing to do upper degree of difficulty dives, and she has more confidence in what she's doing, which is my biggest compliment to her diving."

Liberty divers, Rachel Finn and Samantha Kinkaid, also competed in the 11-dive meet, placing seventh and ninth, respectively.