Park Hill senior Marcin Glebocki repeated as state champion in the 50-yard freestyle, but the Trojans dropped a couple of spots on the podium by the slimmest of margins. With medals in seven events, Park Hill scored 135 team points this past weekend at the Missouri State Swimming and Diving Championships in St. Peters, Mo. and placed fourth overall — earning a second straight team trophy. The Trojans were second place last year and finished just 3 ½ points out of second place this year, two behind third-place Central (Cape Girardeau).
“With the way our season went this year it was very satisfying,” Park Hill coach Karl Haley said. “We had so many little things here and there that kept knocking us down all these little obstacles. We got sick and all these other little things here and there. We had a mistake at conference that cost us the meet. It was very gratifying to come away with some hardware there.”
Glebocki capped his career with four more medals, bringing his career total to 12. He placed in the top 16 in four different events for the second time, first achieving the feat as a sophomore.
In the 50 freestyle, Glebocki finished in 21.23 seconds to edge Rockwood Summit’s Max Stapleton by .02 of second in the final. Glebocki was fourth-fastest in preliminaries but shaved .20 of a second off his time in the final.
Glebocki also placed fourth in the 100 freestyle and swam a leg on the third-place 400 freestyle relay and also helped the Trojans’ 200 freestyle relay repeat as state champion.
Jered Weger, Danny Jones and Sean Cogley joined Glebocki on the 200 team with Cogley, a junior, the only new members from last year season. Barry Chang swam the other leg in 2014, part of his four-medal performance a year ago.
Park Hill finished in 1:27.67 and won by nearly a full second.
Weger, another senior, won three medals and finished his career with eight. He swam on both medal-winning relays and placed eighth in the 200 freestyle at 1:43.91. He easily set a school record in the event, breaking Sean Deegan’s mark which had stood since 2007.
In 2014, Weger placed sixth at state but swam nearly 2 full seconds slower than his finals performance this year.
Jones, a junior, also won three medals with two of them from the relays. He made the consolation final of the 100 butterfly and placed 15th, capping his career at eight medals as well.
Park Hill’s Evan Donnelly, a junior, made the consolation final of the 500 freestyle for Park Hill and placed 14th for his third straight state medal in the event, and junior Daniel Spielhagen rounded out the medal winners for the Trojans, swimming on the 400 freestyle relay team that finished just .13 of a second out of second place.
Park Hill South collected five medals with all but one coming from the consolation finals.
In the 100 backstroke, freshman Jackson Garrett squeezed into the top eight and then tied for seventh in the final with Hickman’s Jacob Ragsdell. Park Hill South’s Ben Milburn placed 16th in the consolation final of the same event.
Connor Morris, a junior, grabbed the Panthers’ final individual points, placing 15th behind Donnelly in the 500 consolation final.
Garrett and fellow freshman Isaac Lee and junior Daniel Miller and Tyler Dunn were on the 13th-place 200 medley relay for Park Hill South, while Ben Milburn, Stephen Heit, Dunn and Garrett made up the 15th-place 400 freestyle team. Dunn medaled 16th in the 100 freestyle the previous season
Park Hill South finished with 26½ points, good enough for 28th in the final team standings.
Platte County ended a lengthy drought without state qualifiers but were unable to advance any swimmers to Saturday’s finals. Josh Richardson, a senior, placed 31st in the preliminaries of the 100 butterfly at 55.76, which set a program record for the Pirates.
Nick Kunels (24th, 50 freestyle), John Cogdill (27th, 100 breaststroke) and Caden DeLay (34th, 100 breaststroke) also swam in individual preliminaries for Platte County. All four of the individual qualifiers were also a part of the state qualifying 200 medley relay team, which timed out at 30th in preliminaries.
Prior to this season, Platte County’s last swimmer to participate at state came back in 2009, and the last season with multiple qualifiers was in 2008.