The Durango High School swimmers went up against the Colorado High School Activities Association’s best talent in the first ever Class 3A swimming and diving championships. After Friday’s preliminaries, one Durango swimmer will represent the Demons in Saturday’s championship finals in at the Veterans Memorial Aquatics Center in Thornton.
After years of all of Colorado’s teams competing at state together, CHSAA split schools into classifications for the 2016-17 season, giving teams such as Durango a better chance to reach finals and earn medals.
DHS junior Mira Joyner will race in the championship finals after finishing in eighth place in the 200-yard individual medley prelims Friday. Joyner’s time of 2 minutes, 18.20 seconds put her in the finals by 0.23 seconds. She also will compete in the 100 breaststroke finals Saturday after another eighth-place time of 1:11.75.
Freshman Mina Willemin will compete in the 200 IM Saturday, as her 15th-place time of 2:25.12 will allow her to race in the consolation finals. Willemin’s 5:47.76 in the 500-yard freestyle placed her 13th to get her into the consolation final. In the same 500 free preliminary, Jocelyn Earl finished ninth with a time of 5:36.30, less than a second out of the championship finals, while Saylor Stottlemeyer took 20th in 5:57.79, and Claire Larson was 24th in the 500.
In the 200-yard freestyle, Earl finished 10th with a time of 2:06.37, also good enough for a Saturday consolation final. In the 200 medley relay preliminaries, Durango’s Emily Doughty, Ruby Epstein, Joyner and Willemin finished in 2:03.54 seconds to earn 14th place, which gives them a spot in the consolation final. The 200 freestyle relay team of Doughty, Earl, Epstein and Joyner earned 10th place and a spot in the consolation finals with a time of 1:47.85.
In the 400 freestyle relay, Earl, Lacey Hoselton, Claire Larson and Willemin finished 18th.
The diving portion of the competition will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday and will feature Durango’s Kylie Behn, Tess Burgwald and Epstein. The swimming finals will begin at 2 p.m.
