Southwest Swim and Dive Finishes at State

The Southwest Girls Swim and Dive team wrapped up their season at the state meet on Friday evening.  Coming into the meet the team  was sitting at 18th place with 37.5 points based on seed times from the sectional meet. After the weekend the team cracked the top ten with an 8th place finish and 96 points.

In the process many school records along with multiple MPS All-Time records were broken. The 200 Medley Relay (Amelia Baxley 11th, Maya Knutson 12th, Peyton D'Emanuele 9th, Elle Niebuhr 9th) broke the all-time MPS record with a time of 1:47.73 coming in at 7th place earning all state honors. 

In the 50 freestyle Peyton D'Emanuele went 23.99 for a new all-time MPS record finishing 11th. Peyton also won the consolation heat at 9th place in the 100 butterfly, :57.66, with a new SW record. 

Senior Maya Knutson came in at :52.47 in the 100 freestyle, a new all-time MPS record, good for 14th place. 

The 200 freestyle relay team of Eve Biederman 11th, Madeline Peak 12th, Maya Knutson 12th, Elle Niebuhr finished 11th with a new all-time MPS record of 1:38.77. 

Junior Amelia Baxley swam her way into the finals finishing 7th in the 100 backstroke earning all state honors. 

To cap off the evening the 400 Freestyle Relay of Maya Knutson, Amelia Baxley, Elle Niebuhr, 

Peyton D'Emanuele finished 4th with a new all-time MPs record of 3:32.20.

These girls and their teammates worked extremely hard throughout the year while focused on their schoolwork as well. The section team GPA was 3.70, academic silver standard as denoted by the coaches association.

While our season is complete and we will dearly miss our seniors, we are very excited to see what next season brings. The team is really a positive example of what goes right in high school athletics for the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Christopher Aarseth, Coach