Park Hill South girls find their groove on opening day of Missouri state swim meet

The Park Hill South girls swimming team put themselves on the state map with three consecutive third-place finishes at the Missouri state championships the last three years.

Panthers coach Tim Busenhart felt his team has been somewhat off the radar this season, which might be understandable as Park Hill South lost three key swimmers who are now competing in college. Defending 200 yard individual medley and 100 freestyle state champion Tori Beeler is at Nebraska, while Anna Riekhof is at Pepperdine and Maggie Hickey at Truman State.

“My thoughts at the beginning of the season was to finish in the top 10,” Busenhart said.

The Panthers had their best day of the season at the state prelims on Friday at the Rec-Plex in St. Peters, Mo., and should be back on the radar in a big way.

“Lafayette, Marquette and Rock Bridge are easily the top three teams this year,” Busenhart said. “But four teams get trophies, and I felt if we swam our best we would have that opportunity to get fourth.”

Park Hill South took a big step in its hopes of a fourth straight state trophy as it qualified a pair of relay teams and five slots in individual heat championships on Friday.

“Everybody had personal bests for the season today,” Busenhart said. “We had to swim the way we did today to have a chance. We passed a couple of teams which we felt we were competing with for fourth and put ourselves in a good spot.”

Park Hill South will be seeded second in Saturday’s finals in a pair of relays. Georgia Clark, Kirsten Aiken, Paige Riekhof and Allison Garrett finished with the second best time (1 minute, 47.22 seconds) Friday in the 200 medley relay. Clark, Riekhof, Garrett and Nadia McCullough equaled that performance in the 200 yard free relay with a time of 1:37.89.

Riekhof and Clark will be in the finals today in individual events Saturday as well: Riekhof qualified third on Friday in the 200-yard freestyle (1:52.38) and fifth in the 100-yard butterfly (57.03). Clark was third in the 100-yard backstroke (56.87) and third in the 200-yard IM (2:05.91).

Garrett is the other Panther who will swim in a championship heat today. She had the sixth best time in the 100-yard breaststroke (1:06.31). The top eight swimmers from Friday compete in championship heats Saturday and the next eight places in the consolation heat.

Park Hill junior Nani Welsh had a good day Friday as she qualified for the championship heats in both the 100-yard freestyle (fifth at 52.05) and 200-yard freestyle (eighth at 1:54.19).

The diving portion of the state meet will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday with the swimming finals scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 8:43 PM with the headline "Park Hill South girls find their groove on opening day of Missouri state swim meet."