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Both Savannah Gorski and Hannah Stec made their state tournament debuts last weekend at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center.

The results didn’t matter as much as the experience for the two girls, as they are both upperclassmen who enjoyed the big stage.

Gorski was the first Wildcat to perform, as the diving prelims were held on Thursday, November 16. She put together some strong dives and strung them together, but the competition at this year’s meet made it very tough to move on to the semifinals. Her first several dives were quite good, but she kicked out of a double somersault a little early and had an average score for that dive.  She ended up scoring 137.55 in her first five dives. That would’ve moved her to the semifinals comfortably in last year’s meet, but in this year’s, it left her in 25th place. The top 20 advance to the semifinals.

Gorski is only a junior, however, and if she continues to put in the work in the offseason, there’s no reason she can’t make a similar run next year to the state tournament and potentially move on.

“Savannah dove really well as a 'first timer' at state.  It’s an intimidating venue with the 32 best divers in the state,” Head Coach Ellen Heath said. “She didn't make it out of diving preliminaries - because of the talent  at state, a diver needs to have a great day with great  scores to make it to the semifinals.  Savannah competed really well with the top divers in the state.  

In the swimming portion on Friday, November 17, senior Hannah Stec shook her first-time jitters and had a nice race in the first heat of the 100 breaststroke.

She got off to a good start, which was surprising since she was ill on both Wednesday and Thursday, and carried that through the 100 meters. She didn’t quite match her section time, but she was going to be hard pressed to do that after such a significant drop. But, she got close with a time of 1:09.56. She was narrowly outtouched by Kayla Sayovitz of Sauk Centre for the last finals spot in 16th place. Sayovitz finished just nine-one hundredths of a second in front of Stec.

“She had an outstanding swim and held pretty close to her section times but was touched out of consolation finals,” Heath explained. “She had a fantastic swim in spite of still feeling the effects of sore throat and congestion. We are very proud of both of their performances!”

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