Once again, the District 11 gold medals belong to the Parkland girls swimming team. The win was the eighth straight for the girls team, who bested Emmaus by a score of 509-426, with Liberty finishing third with 309.5 points. The boys team put on a good showing, finishing third behind Emmaus and Liberty.

“Our girls team has just been phenomenal for us all season and they really wanted this title,” said Parkland head coach Rob Robitaille. “I’m pleasantly surprised by our boys team as well. We told them if you swim hard, you can compete and we were battling for second for a while and couldn’t quite get there, but our guys competed really well.”

Five Parkland swimmers – seniors Tori Connolly and Siena Salvaggio, sophomores Megan Sicinski and Matt Ceh and freshman Allie Lin - qualified to compete in the PIAA Swimming and Diving Championships, which will be held at Bucknell University next Wednesday and Thursday. The swimmers will be joined by divers Kelsey German, Serena Johnson and Chris Lehman, who also qualified for states in an earlier competition.

Salvaggio will be looking to repeat her gold-medal performance from last year’s state competition where she took gold in both the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events. Salvaggio, who also won state gold as a member of the Parkland volleyball team last season, is the top seed in both events this year. Fellow senior Connolly also qualified in two individual events, winning the 500 yard freestyle and placing second in the 200 freestyle.

“I really wanted to put myself in position to repeat at states and I’m excited that I was able to do that,” said Salvaggio. “This was a great meet and I’m proud of how hard all of my teammates worked and the fact that we were the top team again.”

Salvaggio was also awarded the Dennis McGinley Award as the top girls swimmer in the district event and was given the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Swimmer of the Year honor.

Lin and Sicinski finished one-two, respectively, in the 100-yard breaststroke, with Sicinski finishing just .74 seconds behind Lin. In a battle of freshman swimmers, Lin beat Emmaus’ Katie Champagne by just over one-second to win the 200-yard individual medley event.

Ceh was the only boys swimmer to qualify for states, finishing second to Liberty’s Robert Negron in the 50-yard freestyle.

Salvaggio, Lin and Sicinski teamed with senior Kira Karopoulos to win the girls 200-yard medley relay, finishing nearly three seconds ahead of Liberty.

“I was pretty nervous coming in, but my teammates helped to keep me calm, and once we got started, the nerves went away,” said Lin of competing in her first district meet.

“One of the keys for us is the fact that we aren’t strong in just one class,” said Robitaille. “Our seniors are obviously very strong, but we’ve got great underclassmen swimmers who have worked very hard and weren’t intimidated to come into this setting. There may have been some nerves, which is natural, but they certainly weren’t intimidated.”