After winning sectionals on Nov. 12, the girls swim and dive team placed 10th at the state meet a week later in Evanston, marking the team’s best finish at state since 2012.

“I think we did extremely well at state,” relay swimmer Paige Mitchell ’17 said. “The state meet is so competitive and the fact that we finished tenth as a team is pretty special.”

The team qualified to swim in five final events on Saturday; it finished fifth in the 200 yard medley relay and eighth in the 200 free relay and 400 free relay. In the individual events, Callahan Dunn ’20 took ninth in the 200 individual medley and Mary Kate Gannon ’17 claimed fifth in the 100 butterfly.

“Honestly, I thought we could have finished higher in the three relays,” Head Coach Kurt Johns said. “That wasn’t because we did a poor job, it was just that the times from other teams were just a little bit better.”

The team began the year following a 29th place finish at state last season, yet they set high expectations heading into this season.

^“We tried to change our emphasis from trying to get as many swims at state as we could to actually doing something when we are at state,” Johns said.

A group with plenty of great swimmers, the team faced the challenge of looking past the individual battle for spots and truly working as a collective whole, Johns said.

“There’s that inherent competition in high school swimming and sometimes that’s tough,” Johns said. “We had a team with so much depth that it could have self destructed.”

Johns gives most of the credit to the seniors for keeping the rest of the swimmers focused on the team’s goals throughout the season.

“[The seniors] were the leaders of this team,” Johns said. “It’s a good group of girls that did a good job of uniting the team.”

Despite losing the valuable seniors, Johns and his swimmers are confident heading into next year with plenty of talent coming back and an impressive incoming freshmen class on their way in. One of the many talented young swimmers includes Dunn, who swam in all five state events this year for the Lions.

“Heading into the state meet I was really excited because I knew I was going to swim fast and have fun,” Dunn said.” This team is really close, so it was awesome to spend state with them.”