While New Prague diver Brody Dvorak won a berth in the state meet, New Prague swimmers met their goals of big time drops at the Section 2AA Swimming & Diving Feb. 20 meet at Pioneer Ridge Middle School in Chaska.
Heading into the final round of competition in the Section 2AA diving competition, Brody Dvorak was on the outside looking in. His coach, Tracy Torgerson, told him the time was now if he wanted to qualify for the state meet.
Dvorak turned the advice into results and used it to vault from sixth to third and qualify for the state meet. He improved his score from 220.25 in the preliminary round to 333.10.
“Brody really stepped up to the pressure,” Torgerson said.
Dvorak just missed making the state finals Thursday, Feb. 26. He finished 18th in the preliminary competition, two spots from making the state finals.
In the swimming events, New Prague didn’t advance any swimmers to the Class AA state meet. Torgerson said her team didn’t match up well against the big Class AA teams with deeper lineups. But she was thrilled with the reductions in time NP swimmers offered, especially in the relay events.
New Prague’s 200-yard freestyle relay team entered the section finals seeded eighth. The Trojans’ quartet of Jack Torgerson, Brody Dvorak, Christian Engel and Grady Neisen finished fifth. Their preliminary time was 1:47.30. The group cut that time by almost 15 seconds to 1:32.72.
New Prague’s 200-yard medley relay team – Neisen, Torgerson, Isaiah Pavlak and Dvorak – entered the finals seeded eighth. They finished seventh, better than 15 seconds faster than their preliminary time.
The 400-yard freestyle relay team of Jacob Bouley, Rowan Anderson, Lucas Ries and Engel finished eighth in at 3:34.98 – well below the seed time of 3:52.19.
In the 100-yard butterfly, Pavlak finished 15th in 59.19 seconds. Neisen finished 16th in 1:00.20.
New Prague’s Neisen finished 16th in the 50-yard freestyle in 24.69.