For the seventh straight season, the Parkland girls are the conference swimming champions, completing their regular season schedule undefeated at 12-0. They locked up both the undefeated season and EPC championship with a 104.5-81.5 win over rival Emmaus last week. The boys team finished the season at 10-2, dropping the meet against Emmaus by a 111-75 score, rebounding from a 7-5 finish last season.

The win also stretched the girls win streak in regular season meets to 37 straight, with their last loss coming against Wilson-West Lawn on January 28, 2012, during coach Rob Robitaille's first season as coach.

While Robitaille was happy with the addition of this year's conference trophy, he admits that he is looking forward to an even bigger piece of hardware that comes with winning a state championship.

"It's nice and it's definitely a momentum builder, but it's not the overall trophy that we're looking for," he said. "It's a step in the right direction. We've still got some things that we've got to clean up and get right before we even head for districts and hope to win that title, but I'll take this; it's a good victory."

Junior Siena Salvaggio took individual firsts in the 100 and 200 freestyle, while Erika Freeman took individual firsts in the 200 individual medley and the 100 backstroke. Salvaggio and Freeman teamed with Tori Connolly and Erin Jordan for first place finishes with the 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams.

Jordan finished first in the 500 freestyle and second in the 100 backstroke for Parkland.

The win against Emmaus to cap a perfect season was something that Salvaggio and the rest of the team were striving for. She credits the team's senior leaders and the coaches for helping them to reach that goal.

"This is something that we really worked for and the seniors did a great job of leading us this year and it's a really great accomplishment for us," she said. "Coach Robitaille and the other coaches have done an amazing job with us this year and we've all worked really hard. Now, our goal is to have a really successful districts."

While he's appreciative of the credit, Robitaille was quick to deflect the credit back to his swimmers who have pushed themselves and each other toward success. Parkland has had a nice run of talent that has continued to make them strong year after year, but Robitaille knows things can go badly quickly if the swimmers aren't pushing themselves.

"Pipelines can run dry pretty quick, but it's good," he said. "They're responsible for all of the stuff that they do on their own. It doesn't really matter who's coaching them or what anybody's saying to them. When you have determined girls, they're ready to go and they'll do well if they want to do well.

"They're doing this on their own, no matter who's coaching or what we have them doing. They just decide that they want to do it and they do it."

The boys had a strong rebound over last season and has started the process of closing the gap between them and Emmaus. Coming into the meet, Robitaille was hoping to see definite progress from his boys team and was happy with how it competed against its rival.

Adam Sicinski turned in two first-place finishes in individual events, with wins in the 50 and 100 freestyle events. Chris Lehman and Jon Hansell finished one-two, respectively, in the diving portion, while Kelsey German finished second in girls diving.

"We definitely did close the gap," said Robitaille. "I think we closed it by about 20 points. It's a lot better performance than we put up against them last year. We're a young team and we're still building and they're the dominant team in the area, so it's nice to put up more than we did last year."

District meets will cover this weekend and next, with the diving championships being held at Emmaus this Saturday and the District 11 swimming championships coming up February 27th and 28th at Parkland.