Colorado High School Swimming and Diving Championships were held Feb. 12-13 at The Epic Pool in Fort Collins. It only comes once a year, and high schools from all around the state participate. There were 63 high schools that had at least one swimmer in the meet. There are roughly 30 to 40 girls who qualify each year for state.

“I think we had a really great season, and we over-achieved a lot of the year. We had a little rough meet on Friday and then came back on Saturday and swam really well. We got a lower score than I thought we would get, but we still managed to be the top 1/3 in the state of Colorado,”Girls Swim coach Scott Cohen said.

Girls Swim Captain and state competitor Gaby Antunez agrees.

“It was fun. It didn’t go how we thought it would. We didn’t perform as well as we wanted to. It was kind of a learning experience. In state you go in and you don’t know what to expect each year because it was very different from last year and the year before. It is a fun and new experience each year,”Antunez said.

Smoky Hill was ranked 22 out of 63. The points were close to each other which resulted in the swim team not being too far off from the top 15. It was close between 10 teams in the championships. Only one senior dived in and scored points for our school. In comparison to 63 high schools participating, Smoky Hill was still the top 1/3 in the state of Colorado.

“We are pretty young, and I think this is a good starting point for what we’re capable of,”Cohen said. “I just think we had our sight set higher for the position we got but this was a learning experience for our young swimmers. I think they are motivated to work hard and score even higher next year.”

“Natalie Rotondo swam incredible. She was ranked number 10 in the 200 free, which means she was the tenth fastest in the state of Colorado as a sophomore. Jordan Richey also qualified for the finals in the 100 breath strokes. So we had four different swimmers in the finals which is a big deal to make,”Cohen said.

There are two parts to the state meet, prelims and finals. At prelims you have to qualify for finals. A qualifying time is set by Colorado High School Athletics Activities Association which is 25.80 seconds; any girl that swims faster than that time can qualify to swim in the state meet.

“Just to see how many students we had qualify for the state meet and compete was pretty great. We brough 16 girls to the meet which is one of the bigger teams in Colorado. We really outperformed ourselves most of the year. It’s good to see that many students have success,”Cohen said.