Memorial's Herman wins diving sectional as other city swimmers set personal bests
Mar. 31—It was a day of bests for the two Eau Claire high school girls swim and dive programs.
Emily Herman was certainly no exception.
The Eau Claire Memorial senior posted a score of 370.80 in the diving competition to win a sectional title on Tuesday at Northstar Middle School.
"That was her best performance of the year," Old Abes diving coach Al Hudacek said. "We like to shoot for the end of the year rather than the beginning of the year, and this has been a compact year, so it's been a challenge in that way. But it's been a good year because we focused on sections and getting to state from there."
Herman won the event by just under seven points. The performance booked her spot at next week's state meet for the alternate fall season.
"We didn't even think there was going to be a state (meet) this year, so it's great that we have this in the alternate season," Hudacek said.
A few hours after Herman won her event, swimmers from both Eau Claire North and Memorial finished the season strong at the sectional meet at North. Both programs saw girls set personal bests on Tuesday.
"It was a weird, short season, so we did everything we could to get it as normal as possible. The girls came through," North coach Katie Albin said. "We had almost every girl get a personal best in her event tonight, and not just by a little bit, but by a lot."
A similar scenario played out for the Old Abes.
"These girls have been working extremely hard, swimming every day and getting better," Memorial head coach Michelle Johnson said. "We set numerous personal bests for the season. In this short amount of time, that's quite an accomplishment."
Tuesday's sectional was a joint meet hosted by both North and Verona. Memorial, North, Stevens Point and co-ops from Holmen and La Crosse competed in Eau Claire, while Madison Edgewood, Verona, Monona Grove and Middleton were in Verona.
It was the first larger meet of the alternate season, which added to the postseason atmosphere.
"It was so good, because you could just feel the energy with all the girls cheering," Albin said. "Energy and hearing those cheers sometimes helps you swim faster, and I think that was true for everyone tonight."
With competitions going on simultaneously at two different sites, the girls needed to wait several hours for final times to be posted to see who qualified for the state meet. Only the winners of each event were able to clinch automatic berths.
For the rest of the swimmers, the hope was that their score met the qualifying standard for their event. Most of the state qualifiers to come from the North/Verona sectional will likely be from the Verona pool. Swimmers from that half of the meet took the top three spots in nearly every event.
The WIAA will officially announce the state meet qualifiers on Wednesday. State will be held at the Waukesha South High School Natatorium.
"There's going to be a lot of refreshing on the WIAA website tonight," Albin said.
At the North pool, Huskies sophomore Paige Archibald-Smith had the top individual swimming performance among Eau Claire competitors. She took third in the 100-yard butterfly in the North half of the sectional, and finished 11th overall once swimmers from the other half were factored in.
North and Memorial tied for eighth in the team standings for the 10-squad sectional. Edgewood was the top scoring team.
