Through his first five dives at Saturday’s District 11 Class AA Championships, Salisbury’s Tyler Keller pulled out to a 22-point lead over the second-place diver.

After nine dives, Keller had increased his lead to a nearly insurmountable 34 points with three dives remaining.

He finished with three of his hardest dives and put together a first-place total of 417.55, well ahead of second place finisher and Falcon teammate Daniel Bujcs, who finished with 392.85 points.

“My last three dives were also my hardest,” said Keller. “They were also my lowest-scoring. I didn’t hit them as well as I normally do.

“It’s not like I was trying to maintain the lead, I just wanted to hit the dives, keep doing what I’m doing and staying in the groove I was in.”

It marks the second straight year that a Salisbury diver took first place as Denny Bonner was last year’s champion with Keller and Bujcs right behind in second and third place, respectively.

Both Salisbury divers will move on to the PIAA Class 2A Swimming and Diving Championship meet March 18-19 at Bucknell University.

“It’s a goal to always make it to states and do our best at states,” Keller said. “Hopefully we can keep up the tradition there and grab some medals while we’re there.”

Keller took sixth place last year at states and is likely a favorite to take home another state medal this season.

A three-sport athlete who was a first-team all-league soccer goal keeper in fall and will compete in pole vault this spring, Keller is hoping to dive in college. As a junior, he has plenty of time to find the right school.

Bujcs, a senior, was pleased to get back to Bucknell for his final season.

He made it to states as a freshman and sophomore, but came up just short last season.

Saturday at the district championship, which was held at Emmaus High School, Bujcs was just trying to stay in front of Tamaqua’s Thorn Devlin for second place

“It feels great,” he said. “This has been on my mind ever since last year.

After the first two years going, then not going back and now going, it feels really good.”

Bujcs finished 14.55 points ahead of Thorn for the silver medal and the second berth into states.

“My goal was to stay ahead of him and go to states and have Salisbury go first and second,” said Bujcs. “The more the meet went on and the greater the lead I accumulated, the more confident I go and it helped me through.”

After finishing 17th at states as a sophomore and 26th as a freshman, Bujcs wants to improve on those finishes during this year’s trip to Bucknell.

If he makes the top 16 it would also mark his first trip to the finals. Only the top 16 swimmers after preliminaries and semifinals move on to the championship finals.

The divers also picked up some team points to get the Falcon swimmers a head start heading into this weekend’s District 11 swimming events Friday and Saturday at Parkland High School.