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CHHS Swimmer Competes at State
By Samantha Alexon, Co-Editor-In-Chief of "The Heights Herald"
While all eyes have been on the boys basketball team over the past few years, other winter sports have flown under the radar at Columbia Heights High School (CHHS). This year, a member of the boys swimming and diving team broke that barrier as he advanced to the state tournament.
Sophomore David Abram competed at the state swimming and diving meet Feb. 28 at the University of Minnesota. Abram advanced to the state meet after a fantastic third place finish at the section 4A meet the previous week.
“I’m very proud of how well David did at sections. He had been diving very well at practice for the past few days and we were all excited to see how he would do in the meet,” CHHS alumnus and Assistant Coach Nick Hosch (2016) said.
Swim Team Captain and CHHS Junior Aaron Severson competed in the diving portion of the sections meet. He placed fifth and was a mere 30 points away from state.
“I think sections went really well this year -- not just for me, but for the whole team. I was super excited to place fifth and David did phenomenally,” Severson said.
Warm-ups began at 9:30 a.m. and were divided by competitive section assignments. Once the competition started at noon, they began the elimination process. 24 divers competed from Class A to start. In the preliminary round, divers only competed their first five dives. The top 20 divers advanced to the semifinals. From there, those 20 divers competed with three more dives, and the top sixteen advanced to the finals.
“I was really nervous throughout the entire meet. The setting was pretty overwhelming, and there were a lot of extremely good divers there,” Abram said.
Unfortunately, his nerves got to him and Abram had a bit of a rough start. After nearly failing his first dive, his points were significantly lower than his competitors. While he was able to catch up a little bit, he was not able to pass his competitors and was eliminated in the first round. Abram placed 23rd out of 24 in the competition.
“I was a little upset with how I placed considering how well I had done at sections, but I was mostly just excited to be at state,” Abram said. “I’m hoping to make the top 16 and compete at finals next year.”
With high hopes for next year and beyond, all Hylanders should keep their eyes peeled for some of the under attended CHHS sports and be prepared to support all of our future state competitors.