Tigers Finish WPIAL Slate with Senior Night Sweep of North Hills
by Bob Orkwis
North Allegheny honored its highly successful senior class on Thursday night in Wexford in words, pictures, videos and results as the girls’ swim/dive team (98-74) and the boys’ team (95-80) both finished the WPIAL meet season with (11-0) records.
Christina Shi (315.40) and freshman Ethan Maravich (197.10) were victorious in the opening diving events for the Tigers. More on Shi’s record-breaking efforts to come.
Greta Mott, Lexi Sundgren, Julianne Weaver and Becca Melanson (1:53.29) won the girls 200-medley relay, and when the team of Elliot Maravich, William Gao, Gus Miller and Dylan Seiford (1:42.22) captured the event for the boys, the teams were off to a great start.
Natalie Sens (1:59.34) and Danny Lesinski (1:48.98) won the 200-yard freestyle races and were followed by Emma Dietz (2:14.83) and Eliot Maravich (2:04.07) as winners in the 200-yard IM events. Weaver (25.63) and freshman Mason Shantz (23.40) posted 50-freestyle wins as the Tigers roll continued.
Vivian Li (59.64), Gus Miller (55.13) in the 100-fly and Lexi Sundgren (53.56) and Grant Regule (48.41) in the 100-free events were the next winners for North Allegheny. Freshman Claire Bacu (5:17.44) dominated the girls 500-free, with Nick Klein (5:01.45) winning on the boys’ side.
The Tigers lead meant that points were awarded late to North Hills, but North Allegheny swept the girls 200-free relay and the boys finished one-two. Vivien Li won the 100-back before the Indians grabbed wins in the boys 100-back and the boys 100-breast. In between, Dietz (1:10.82) took first in the girls 100-breast. The Tigers then swept the 400-yard freestyle relay events to cap of a highly successful and fun Senior Night.
It was such a fun night, that some of the North Allegheny divers, both boys and girls (Faith Miller, Shi, Alex Palermo and Maddie Whitewolf) unofficially participated in the boys 200-freestyle relay race.
The Wright Automotive Boys and Girls Swimmer/Diver awards were as follows: on the boy’s side, senior Zach Jubeck was chosen. Jubeck won the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of (1:04.14) which shaved over a second off of his seed time. And for the second time, it was hard to overlook Christina Shi on the girls’ side. On Feb. 1, the senior set a six-dive pool record with a score of 305.60. Last Thursday, Lola Malarky broke that record with a score of 309.30. The friendly contest of record breaking leapfrog continued tonight as Shi took the top spot back with her score of 315.40. Shi’s night saw her post scores of all 8.0’s. all 8.5’s and all 7.5’s on her final dive.
If necessary, the Last Ditch Invitational, scheduled for this Saturday remains on the schedule, and the WPIAL Championships line up after that. The 3A Diving competition is scheduled on Saturday Feb. 25 at North Allegheny with the swimming championships to be held on Thursday and Friday March 2 & 3 at the University of Pittsburgh. All of those championships will be video streamed live by our friend’s at the Trib Live High School Sports Network.