The Park Hill South girls’ swimming team poses for a picture after being crowned with first-place finish in the Class 2 State Girls’ Swimming Championship at the St. Peters Rec Plex on Feb. 17.
ST. PETERS – It’s been a long time coming, but Park Hill South stopped knocking on the door and officially walked inside, capturing the first state title in program history.
Following four straight seasons of better finishes than the last, Park Hill South ran away with a first-place finish in the Class 2 State Girls’ Swimming Championship at the St. Peters Rec Plex on Feb. 17. Making it to state nearly every season of the 21st century, the Lady Panthers had earned third place four times from 2014-2022 and have now made history in back-to-back years.
This senior class brought home the best state finish in program history twice, becoming the runner-up in 2023 and winning it all in 2024. Park Hill South ended with 303 points at state, a whopping 135 points higher than Eureka and MICDS, which tied for second place.
To put in perspective how impressive this state title was, Park Hill South became the first team from the Kansas City metro area to accomplish said feat since Blue Springs in 2009. In the diving, there were three Lady Panthers in the top-9 with 32 total girls competing.
Megan Wells was the runner-up and Aniya Clemons was one spot behind her, both earning all-state honors. Molly Toohig was in ninth place, good enough for all-state honorable mention.
Park Hill South had success in the relays, led by the 200-yard medley relay team. Lizzie Landuyt, Alyssa Gordon, Molly Henry and Charlotte Sander not only set a new school record of 1:45.81 but became state champions in the event.
Sander and Gordon did the same thing in the 200-yard freestyle relay, teaming up with Natalie Dunaway and Elisa DeCaro. They finished in a record-time of 1:36.88.
DeCaro, Henry, Landuyt and Dunaway were the runners-up in the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:34.29. Eureka won that relay in 3:31.47.
Gordon went from seventh place to fourth place in the 200-yard IM, having an impressive finish to the race and completing it in 2:08.51. She also ended her high school career with a second-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:04.29.
In the 50-yard freestyle, Dunaway and Sander were all-state swimmers and DeCaro was an honorable mention in 13th place. Dunaway ended third in 23.86 seconds and Sander finished fifth in 24.19 seconds.
Those three also killed it in the 100-yard freestyle. Dunaway took fifth place, Sander took 10th place and DeCaro took 16th place.
In the 100-yard backstroke, Landuyt ended in third place and Henry ended in eighth place.
Henry had a PR of 57.58 seconds in the 100-yard butterfly, taking fifth place. Bella Knittig ended with all-state honorable mention honors in 16th place in 1:01.52.
In her first time at state, Zella Berberich finished in 14th place in the 500-yard freestyle. The junior finished with a time of 5:22. 57.
The seven Park Hill South seniors – McKelvey McDaniel, Isabella Mountjoy, Ella Turley, Annike Versfeld, Megan Wells, Gordon and Toohig – left their mark on the program. While they will be tough to replace, the Lady Panthers will hope to build off the best 2-year run in history when next winter comes around.