Three divers and one swimmer from Parkland came home from Bucknell University with medals in the PIAA Swimming and Diving Championships this past weekend.

Sophomore Ally Lin brought home a fourth-place medal in the 500-yard freestyle event, while divers Lexi Lehman and Alexa Brinker finished fifth and seventh, respectively, in the event. Sophomore Logan Choma finished seventh in diving in the boys’ competition.

Lin dropped two full seconds off of her preliminary time in the 500, finishing the finals with a time of 4:57.36. Her preliminary time of 4:59.37 was her personal best, which stood only until her performance in the afternoon’s finals of the event.

On Friday, Lin finished 10th in the preliminaries of the 200-yard IM, just missing the medal round. In the consolation finals, Lin dropped 1.15-seconds off of her time in the preliminaries to finish at 2:04.96, just .12-seconds behind ninth-place finisher Cameron Gring of Muhlenberg.

The girls’ diving event was dominated by North Penn High School, who had divers take the first four spots in the competition, led by senior Paige Burrell, who took gold.

The group included one other senior and two juniors who were in the competition. The 68 team points earned by the North Penn divers helped them to win the girls’ state championship by 77 points.

Lehman finished just eight points behind fourth-place finisher Madalyn Freece with a final score of 437.70. This year’s state event was the third straight for the two Parkland junior divers who have battled back-and-forth during their high school careers.

Lehman finished ninth last season and 15th in 2017, while Brinker went from a 16th-place finish in 2017 to eighth last year. Brinker finished just 3.3 points behind sixth-place finisher Meredith Gould of Hershey.

“I’ve grown up with all of those girls [from North Penn] and I’ve been going up against them since I was a little girl,” said Lehman. “They’re all nice and I like them.

“They’re graduating Paige, so that will be nice. I want to move up and keep progressing. I moved up from last year, so hopefully I just keep going and can do bigger stuff.”

Between dives, Lehman was nestled between a wall and a set of bleachers with earphones in, not paying any attention to the other divers, which is just the way she likes it.

“When I sit apart from everyone, that’s when I try to just not think of anything diving. I just put my headphones on and focus on something else and usually, that works for me,” she explained.

Choma finished just 13.5 points behind sixth-place finisher Owen Johns of Mt. Lebanon. Johns put on a big finish after preliminaries where he finished 10th and Choma was sixth. In the semi-finals, the two battled each other bouncing between sixth and seventh in the event.

In boys’ swimming, junior Gavin Webb placed 14th in the 500-yard freestyle event. Webb shaved 3.5-seconds off of his qualifying time to finish the preliminaries with a time of 4:39.91 and then took another second off his time in the consolation finals with a time of 4:38.89 in the event.

In the team scores, the girls finished 16th and the boys finished 34th. The only other local girls’ team to amass points was Emmaus, which finished 14th and on the boys’ side, Nazareth was ninth, Liberty 23rd, Freedom 42nd and Southern Lehigh 48th.