The Milford boys swim team finished in fifth place at the ECC Championships over the weekend.

The Milford boys swim team finished in fifth place at the ECC Championships over the weekend.
By Chris Chaney
Sun staff

The Glen Este and Milford High School swim teams competed in the Eastern Cincinnati Conference Swimming and Diving Championships over the Jan. 24 weekend at Anderson High School.

Milford edged the Trojans in both the boys and girls competition finishing in fifth place and sixth place, respectively, while Glen Este finished in sixth and seventh.

During the diving portion of the meet, locals finished admirably in each gender as Glen Este’s Bethany Berger and Baylee Lawson posted top-10 results. Milford’s Joel Adams finished third in the boys portion, scoring a 240.95. The Eagles’ Cole Dunham and Nolan Nye also were top-10 finishers on the 1-meter board.

Other notable finishes by local athletes included Milford’s Tyler Karan’s fifth-place finish in the boys 100-yard freestyle; the Eagles’ Paul Keefer came in fifth in the 100-yard breaststroke and the Lady Eagles’ 400-yard freestyle relay team also finishing fifth.

Joe Dulle, John Martino, Margaret Dulle and Olivia Killebrew notched some of the best finishes for the Aqua Trojans.

Turpin won the boys meet with a total score of 368. Walnut Hills was second with 353, Anderson was third with 307, Kings was fourth at 182, Milford was fifth with 113.5, Loveland was sixth at 47.5 and Glen Este was seventh with 12 points.

On the girls side, Kings took home the conference title with 343 points, edging second-place Turpin by two points. Walnut Hills came in third with 239, Anderson was fourth at 225, Loveland was fifth with 130, Milford was sixth with 100 points and Glen Este was seventh with 17.

Glen Este traveled to New Richmond on Tuesday, Jan. 27 for a dual match with their Clermont County rivals and will be in action one more time at the Fred Cooper Invitational held at St. Xavier High School on Feb. 7.

The Eagles will have one more tournament meet at the Sycamore Invitational the weekend of Feb. 6.

Both Glen Este and Milford will compete in the Division I sectional tournament at Mason High School during the week of Feb. 9. Boys diving will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 10 beginning at 6 p.m. The girls diving will be the following day at the same time.

The swimming portion of the sectional will be that weekend. The boys will compete on Friday, Feb. 13 beginning at 6:30 p.m. and the girls portion will take place Saturday in two waves, one beginning at 9:30 a.m. and the second starting at 3:30 p.m.

The Mason sectional, along with two other sectional sites, will advance two divers as automatic qualifiers to the district tournament. In addition to those six, the next 18 highest-scoring divers across all Southwest Ohio sites will advance creating a field of 24 divers.

For boys swimming, each sectional site will advance two automatic qualifiers in each event. The next 24 at-large qualifiers will advance to create a field of 32 swimmers in each event. Should an automatic qualifier not finish in the top-32 overall scores, he will be added at the end in open lanes.

Relays will also have two automatic qualifiers from each site plus 16 at-large qualifiers to make a field of 24. Similarly to individual events, automatic qualifiers outside of the 24 best times will be added in open lanes.

For the girls, the same parameters apply, except that individual events will add the next 22 at-large qualifiers as opposed to 24 for the boys because of the added sectional meet on Saturday afternoon. Likewise, there will be 14 at-large qualifiers in the relays, also creating a field of 24.

More information about the ECC Championships can be found on eccsports.com and sectional tournament information is available on swdab.org.