The second annual Cedar Crest Invitational was held Saturday at Parkland High School. The event, organized by Parkland coach Rob Robitaille and Emmaus coach Tim O’Connor, brings seven other schools in for opening day of the season.

The event doesn’t track points and has no consideration in any season standings, but it does give the swimmers an opportunity to gauge where they are at the start of the season.

“We wanted to put together an opening-day meet where we could put together a bunch of competitive swims anywhere from A level down to our D level kids,” said Robitaille. “I thought overall there was a bunch of widespread talent, so everybody had a race today.

“We’re fortunate that we have a facility to be able to host 330 kids and 30 coaches and have a warm-up and warm-down facility, so with the size here, it was good to be able to fit everybody in.”

In addition to Parkland and Emmaus, the competition included teams from Central Catholic, Freedom, Governor Mifflin, Hatboro-Horsham, Nazareth, Southern Lehigh and Wyoming Valley West. Governor Mifflin and Hatboro-Horsham were added to the event this season. In all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 340 swimmers competed.

Since the points weren’t tabulated and there was no team competition, coaches took different approaches to the event and how they encouraged their swimmers to go into their events.

“I entered all of our kids with season-best times,” said Robitaille. “We had a lot of time drops from in-season times, and we dropped on a lot of those, which means we’re either at where we were at the end of last season or ahead of it, which is good.

“I was surprised with a couple of our swims; a couple of them were really, really good, and we definitely have some things that we need to clean up.”

Matt Ceh was deemed the unofficial swimmer of the meet for Parkland, dropping his season-best times from last season as he looks to develop into one of the team leaders as a junior.

Robitaille is hopeful that as the season goes on and younger swimmers continue to develop for his team, Parkland will regain that swagger that has made them into one of the best swimming and diving programs in the Lehigh Valley. The girls team has won four straight conference titles and had its streak of seven straight district titles end last season. The team still has a mark of recording 10 district titles in 12 seasons.

With an increase in weight training and power building for this season, Robitaille may be looking at a very different type of coaching job ahead of him this season than he’s had in others.

“That’s where the nuances in coaching come in and hopefully, we don’t suffer any injuries or setbacks,” said Robitaille. “I thought overall, our juniors and seniors on the boys side had a very good day. Our girls also did really well and if we continue to keep lowering times like we’ve been doing, it’s going to be a good season. Today was a great start and I think we’re actually ahead of where I thought that we might be.”