The Parkland girls swim team captured their seventh straight District 11 Championship on Saturday and will have a strong contingent of swimmers heading to the PIAA Swimming Championships next week at Bucknell University.

Junior Siena Salvaggio captured the Dennis McGinley Award as the meet's top female swimmer, and was awarded the East Penn Conference Swimmer of the Year Award for her performance over the course of the season.

In districts, which was held last Friday and Saturday at Parkland High School, Salvaggio captured gold in both the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events, besting the record of :51.00 that she set in last year's meet, with a time of :49.92. Salvaggio was also on the gold-medal winning 400-yard freestyle relay team, which also had Erika Freeman, Erin Jordan and Tori Connolly. In the 200-yard freestyle relay, Salvaggio, Connolly, Jordan and Alex Bodnar came in second in the event.

"It's just an amazing experience and there was good competition, which makes it that much more rewarding," said Salvaggio. "As a team, one of our goals this season was to break some records, so this is amazing."

Parkland will have an impressive contingent at states this year. Seniors Freeman and Jordan will each compete in two events, with both swimmers in the 100-yard backstroke and Freeman in the 200-yard individual, while Jordan competes in the 500 freestyle. Junior Connolly will also be in the 500 and will also compete in the 200-yard freestyle.

The Lady Trojans held a nice lead coming into day two of the meet, but quickly pushed their lead open in the first two events of the day, when Salvaggio won the 100 freestyle and Connolly, Jordan and Shannon Bonner finished one-two-three, respectively, in the 500 freestyle to pretty much cement the win for Parkland.

"I'm really happy with how everyone swam," said Connolly. "Shannon's in her senior year and she really wanted to go out with a bang and she did awesome. We all swam really well and tried our best. I was really happy with my time. My goal was to be around 5:00 and I almost got there [5:01.72], so I'm happy with that."

In addition to the individual competitors, Parkland will also have relay teams competing in the 400 freestyle, the 200 medley and the 200 freestyle at states.

It wasn't just upper classmen that had big meets for Parkland. Some of the underclassmen made impressive showings, even though they fell just short of qualifying for states. Freshman twins Courtney and Megan Sicinski finished fourth and sixth, respectively, in the 100 yard breaststroke.

Parkland finished with a team score of 443, with Emmaus finishing in second at 334. Liberty (294) finished third, while Nazareth and Freedom (247) tied for fourth in the team competition.