DUBUQUE — Solon’s Grace Hoeper and Avery Mann qualified for the 2022 Girls State Swimming and Diving meet to be held this weekend in Marshalltown. Hoeper and Mann, with Calla Foster, Georgia Havlicek, Claire Leone, Tatum Holtkamp, and Ella Vernon, swim with the City High Little Hawks.
City placed fifth in the Region 2 meet Saturday, Nov. 5 at Hempstead High School in Dubuque with Cedar Falls taking the Regional Championship with 523 points followed by Decorah (312), Dubuque Senior (265), Wahlert Catholic (257), City High, Waterloo East (200), and Davenport North (57).
Hoeper, a sophomore, won the 50-yard freestyle to automatically qualify for State with a time of 23.72 seconds, earning her the No.1 seed. She also won the 100-yard butterfly in 56.47 seconds for the No.2 seed at State.
Hoeper and Mann, with City High’s Saoirse Miller and Margalit Frank, took third in the 400-yard freestyle relay, qualifying for State on time and earning the No.16 seed while Hoeper and City’s Ellie Galloway, Miller, and Frank were fourth in the 200-yard medley relay in 1:54.71. The foursome qualified on time for the 22nd seed.
City High’s Greta Stanier qualified in the one-meter diving event.
Vernon was 18th in the 100-yard freestyle in Dubuque in 1:04.88 and tenth in the 200-yard freestyle in 2:18.48. Mann was fifth in the 500-yard freestyle in 5:43.24, Holtkamp was 19th in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:28.04, and Foster earned 309.70 points in the one-meter dive for eighth place.
The State Swimming Preliminary Meet is set for 11:00 a.m. Friday, Nov. 11 at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA with State Diving at 5:00 p.m. The State Swimming Finals will begin at noon Saturday, Nov. 12.
Tickets are available on the Varsity Bound (Bound) website, https://ia.varsitybound.com for $10 plus processing fees for each session. Parking is also $10 with tickets also available at https://www.gobound.com/ia/ighsau/gsw/2022-2023/tickets. A map of parking sites is on the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s website at https://ighsau.org, which also has links to free online streaming of the meets.