SWIM & DIVE PREVIEW: Park Hill South hoping to best 2010 season

Most teams would be ecstatic about the seventh place finish Park Hill South received in last year’s state meet, but the Panthers, a mainstay at the top of local and state swim rankings in recent years, weren’t quite satisfied with it. A disqualification prevented them from placing even higher, possibly resulting in a fourth of fifth place finish coach Steven De La Piedra says.

Despite losing eight seniors, they also return seven state qualifiers for the 2011 season. Not only will they return talent and experience, they have eleven new freshmen swimmers that are showing some promise for the future. This leaves De La Piedra with confidence about how will the team can do this year. In fact, they feel they can return to the state meet in November and retake what they feel is their rightful place among Missouri’s swimming elite.

“We’ve got a pretty good balance. There’s a lot of good leadership on the team, we’ve got a lot of young kids that are swimming fast,” De La Piedra said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the top five at state this year.”

Reloading with new athletes each year is nothing new to Park Hill South, they’ve been able to build off local youth swim clubs in the area where kids are able to compete at a young age and become familiar with the kind of atmosphere high school meets will be like.

“We’ve got a really good system of summer teams that kind of feed into Park Hill South, so it gives us a lot kids each year that come in with swimming experience,” De La Piedra said.

Returning are junior state qualifiers Liam Huffman (100 freestyle and 200 individual medley), Tom Prinslow (500 freestyle), seniors Daniel Day (200 individual medley and 100 fly) and Jake Fisher (100 backstroke). Huffman will likely be strongest in those events again, but would be competitive in several events depending on where the team’s need for points come from. Aubrey Churchman also returns to vindicate a near miss at a state berth last year.

Something the Panthers hope gives them an edge this year will be the chance to score some high points in the diving portion of competition with senior Spencer Moran.

“I expect him to be in the top of the pack which will really help us out because traditionally we haven’t had a lot of diving points scored for us at state before,” De La Piedra said.

South has some of the toughest meets in the state on their schedule this season which will give them an early indication of where they rank to other teams in the state.

“The Ozark Invitational in Springfield will give us an idea of where we stand in the state. All the good teams swim in that meet except for the St. Louis teams. Two weeks later we’re scheduled for an invite in St. Louis and that will really tell us where we are compared to everyone else,” De La Piedra said.