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The Chisago Lakes boys grabbed two relay spots in this week’s state meet, as well as two diving spots, when they hit the pool for the Section 4A meet.

The meet is tough to get qualifiers through because although the roster is not exceptionally deep, it features perennial national swimming powerhouse St. Thomas Academy, and the Tommies suck up a lot of the state spots with just their roster alone. In fact, St. Thomas had the top two finishers in seven events, and the top four finishers in three events, and they won every relay race.

But, the Wildcats were able to squeeze-in two relay spots of their own with the quartet of Tanner Betts, Jackson Cunningham, Nate Bear and Grant Sundberg earning third place in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:44.93. The senior foursome held off St. Paul Como Park for the last state spot in the event.

In the 200 freestyle relay, Betts, Bear and Cunningham teamed up again, but this time, junior Riley Solberg was part of the team and helped the squad into second place in a time of 1:35.04. They were well off of St. Thomas’s meet winning time of 1:29.21, and were able to just hold off Fridley’s quartet, who finished in 1:36.51.

Betts, Bear and Cunningham are all making their second appearance at the state meet after qualifying last year with relay teams as well.

In diving, the freshman tandem of Talan Koester-Radmann and Dylan Aultman will be heading to the state meet. 

Koester-Radmann is returning after his debut as an eighth grader last year, and Aultman will be making his first appearance.  Koester-Radmann scored a 318.90 to finish in second place behind Donovan Timmerman of St. Paul Humboldt, and Brayden Dameral finished with 233.05 points in third place.

The divers will kick the state meet off with the Class A preliminaries Thursday, March 6 at noon. 

The swimmers will then make their splash at noon on Friday, March 7. If either the swimmers or the divers make it to the finals or consolation finals, they would swim or dive again Saturday, March 8 at noon. 

All events will be at the Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

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