Starr’s Mill swim team competed at the swimming state championship at Georgia Tech’s McAuley Aquatic Center. The girls team finished 9th overall and the boys team finished 12th overall.
“State was a good meet. The big thing about state is we want our kids to be performing and swimming their fastest. If you can kind of compare it through the whole season, we had a lot of swimmers getting personal records,” head coach Derek Abrams said. “We had one swimmer, Braeden Roach, he got four school records in one meet and that was just, I’ve never seen that before.”
The girls had several top 10 finishes, with many getting new personal best times. All of the girls placed high enough in preliminaries to swim in finals on Thursday. They swam three relays that finished 7th, 8th, and 9th.
Senior Ella Glinski was 16th in the 200 and the 100 freestyles, sophomore Megan Holmes placed 12th in the 100 butterfly and 9th in the 100 backstroke, and sophomore Emily Benson earned 13th in the 50 freestyle. Senior Brooklyn Klutz and sophomore Mason Burgess were the relay only swimmers.
The boys also had several top 10 finishes and new personal best times. They finished all three relays and qualified for finals, finishing in 19th, 5th, and 11th.
Junior Jack Lynch placed 2nd in 100 breaststroke and 7th in 200 individual medley, senior Braeden Roach finished 2nd in 500 freestyle and 2nd in 200 freestyle, and junior Elliott Dale earned 12th in 100 butterfly and 22nd in the 50 freestyle relay. Senior Jeffrey Lin, junior Joshua Jiang, sophomore Parth Mahajan, and senior Jacob Ramsey were the relay only swimmers.
Senior Braeden Roach set four new school records at the meet for the 50 free, 100 free, 200 free, and 500 free. The 50 freestyle relay record was set in 2005 and has stood for 20 years.
“[Setting new records] was a goal going into the season, so to be able to actually do it I was very excited,” Roach said.