The Park Hill South boys’ swimming team poses with state medals and the third-place plaque at the Class 2 State Championship with 261 points at the St. Peters Rec Plex on Nov. 11.
ST. PETERS – The quest for a boys’ swimming championship was a tight race between the top-3 teams and Park Hill South settled for third place in Class 2 at the St. Peters Rec Plex on Nov. 11.
This is the second consecutive season that Rockhurst and Park Hill South battled it out at the top. In 2022, the Hawklets won it all and the Panthers were the runner-up.
St. Louis University High (SLUH) took fifth place last fall but improved this year and was in the mix with the defending champion and runner-up. Rockhurst repeated as the Class 2 State Champion – which is actually its fourth consecutive title and usually wins by a comfortable margin – eight points ahead of SLUH as Park Hill South trailed the runner-up by 11 points, taking third overall with 261 points.
Park Hill also competed at state, taking 17th place with 31 points. There were 25 total teams that competed at the Class 2 State Championship.
Park Hill South had four divers who qualified and half of them walked away with all-state honors. Cooper McQueen was third overall with 383.45 points and Grant Carpenter earned seventh place with 366.95 points.
Atreyu McCauley took 13th place with 328.3 points, earning all-state honorable mention. Henry Dorothy wasn’t too far behind in 17th place.
As for the swimming events, the Panthers’ best moment was in the 200-yard freestyle relay when they not only won the event, but they set a program record after switching up the lineup from preliminaries. Grady Burns was the lead leg on the first-place preliminary team that ended in 1:27.18.
In the finals, Jacob Duckworth was the lead leg and was followed by Matt Henderson. Drew Franklin and Roman Lewis were the last two that ended in a record time of 1:24.84, almost two full seconds ahead of SLUH in second place.
Park Hill South didn’t come out in first in the 400-yard freestyle relay but had a lead over Rockhurst, the eventual winner, for half of the race and set another school record. The team of Gentry Comstock, Alex Briggs, Henderson and Lewis completed the race in 3:07.67 – shedding six seconds off its time in conference two weeks prior.
Park Hill South improved from eighth place to fourth place in the 200-yard medley relay from the first day to the second day after switching up the order. In preliminaries, the Panthers ended in 1:37.43 before improving that time to 1:34.71 in the finals, which was another school record.
During prelims, Gentry Comstock did backstroke, Francis-Cummings was in breaststroke, Briggs did the butterfly and Drew Franklin swam the freestyle. Duckworth was competing with a broken wrist, so the coaches wanted to give him some rest on opening day and see how he did in his individual events, so he subbed in for Franklin in the second day.
Park Hill South senior Roman Lewis was a huge contributor in the Panthers’ third-place finish at the Class 2 State Championship at the St. Peters Rec Plex on Nov. 11.
Despite being injured, Duckworth also shined as an individual with a pair of top-6 finishes. The senior ended his career with an all-state, third-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke and a sixth-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle.
Francis-Cummings was right behind Duckworth in the breaststroke and earned honorable mention. Comstock was one spot ahead of Duckworth in the freestyle, while Grady Burns earned 14th place and Henderson was in 17th place.
Francis-Cummings walked away with all-state honors in the 200-yard IM with a sixth-place finish. Briggs had the same finish in the 100-yard butterfly, beating Nick Maris who claimed 25th place.
Lewis and Comstock both were all-staters in the 100-yard freestyle. Lewis took third place in 46.35 seconds and Comstock was a spot behind him in 47.1 seconds.
Briggs and Lewis were both all-state honorable mentions in the 200-yard freestyle, ahead of Isaac Dierker who took 21st place. Henderson took 12th place and Burns took 19th place in the 100-yard freestyle, along with Dierker taking 23rd place in the 500-yard freestyle.
Park Hill didn’t have any relays qualify for finals as Raphael Realina and Jack Stanley led the way. Realina was all-state in the 200-yard IM in 1:55.82 and 14th place all-state honorable mention in the 100 breaststroke when he set a new school record in 59.43 seconds.
Jack Stanley finished 14th with all-state honorable mention in 200 IM. His more impressive feat was a sixth-place, all-state finish in the 100-yard backstroke in 52.06 seconds to set a Park Hill record.