Emmaus diver Brendan McCourt has been getting better and better with each big event. With two District 11 diving championships to his credit, the junior diver came into states with a dream of having a gold medal hung around his neck and he didn’t miss the opportunity. Meanwhile, Emmaus boys swimmers put up good performances to finish 15th in the team standings.

McCourt was competing in his second straight trip to states and bested his 2018 score of 445.70 with a 542.75 score this year. As good as McCourt’s performance was, it fell just shy of his personal best of 551.70 at this year’s EPC Championship. The score still gave him a pretty good cushion of 55 points ahead of second-place finisher David Manelis of Fox Chapel.

“I came into the season with this as my goal and I was confident, but I still can’t quite believe it,” McCourt said. “To actually be able to have that gold medal around my neck is a dream come true. I worked so hard for this.”

While McCourt led throughout the diving, it was his seventh dive that separated him from Manelis. Through five rounds, Manelis was just four points behind, but McCourt started to pull ahead in the sixth round and put the event away in the seventh round when he nailed a reverse two-and-a-half to pick up more than 60 points on the dive. That round gave McCourt some breathing room and sent him on the way to his first state gold.

“I knew that was going to be an important dive for me and that could really put me in a good spot,” said McCourt. “I had worked so hard on that dive and really needed to pull it off if I was going to get the gold. It was nice to have that cushion, it made the rest of the dives a little easier, but I knew not to let up.”

In swimming, the Emmaus team of sophomores Michael Iacobelli, Luke Rautzhan, Connor Shriver and Nick Soares, finished 14th in the preliminaries of the 400-yard freestyle relay and then moved up to 11th in the consolation finals with a time of 3:10.07, which was just under two seconds faster than their time in the preliminaries.

In the 200-yard medley relay, Iacobelli and Shriver teamed with senior Evan Bova and junior Gio Germano to post a time of 1:35.86 in the consolation finals to finish 13th in the event.

In individual events, Rautzhan and Soares finished 12th and 13th, respectively, in the 200-yard freestyle event. Rautzhan edged Soares by .25 seconds in the preliminaries and then by just .07 seconds in the consolation final.

Iacobelli swam in the 200-yard individual medley and finished tied for 10th with LaSalle College’s Matt Szekely in the preliminaries. Iacobelli returned for the consolation final to finish 16th in the event with a final time of 1:54.85.

In team competition, Nazareth had a big showing to finish ninth, while Liberty took 23rd, Parkland finished 34th, Freedom 42nd and Southern Lehigh 48th.