Preview: Park Hill Girls Swimming looks to overcome last year's second place conference finish

After coming in as runners-up at last year’s conference swim and dive meet, the Park Hill girls team will be swimming against a new set of competitors at this year’s meet as conference realignment puts the Trojans up against North Kansas City, St. Joe Central, Ruskin, Lee’s Summit West, and Truman. Although their conference will change, their regular season schedule will feature many of the same familiar opponents and coming off an 11-2 dual meet record from last year puts Park Hill in position to have another successful season.

Relying on a core group of swimmers to lead them, the Trojans will look to junior Brynn Guardado to be their strongest swimmer. Guardado returns as a member of the All-State team in the 200 and 500 freestyle. Joining her will be senior Kaley Hensel and sophomore Abigail Hill in the breaststroke and Jasmine Jones in the butterfly. Returning state qualifying divers include Eleanor Parrott and Jordan Rowlett.

Coach Karl Haley’s team will participate in two big swim invites this season as they compete in the Independence Invitational in mid-December and then they come home to host their annual Park Hill Invitational at the beginning of January. In terms of overcoming their second place finish from last year, the team that appears to most likely sit in the Trojans way of a conference title is Lee’s Summit West who returns a strong squad from last year. Haley believes they will give them a strong run for it though if his team puts the work in.

In addition to competing for a conference championship, the team will once again try to qualifier as many swimmers and divers as possible for the state meet in mid-February.