PREP SWIMMING & DIVING: Auburn High boys, girls finish second at state championships

By the time Megan Molnar was 25 yards into her 100-yard breaststroke final, she was a full body length ahead of the rest of the field.

“Just me and the clock,” the Auburn High swimmer said.

Molnar beat the rest of the field by 5.18 seconds, winning her second individual state title at this year’s swimming and diving championships, held Friday and Saturday at Auburn University’s James E. Martin Aquatics Center.

She also beat the clock, in a sense, lowering her own state record by .15 seconds and touching the wall at 1:02.31.

“My best time’s a little faster than that,” Molnar said. “But I still broke the record. So that’s awesome.”

For the second year in a row, both the Tigers’ boys and girls teams finished second at the state meet. The girls finished behind Mountain Brook, 210-185, and the boys were runner-up to Bob Jones, 293-232, in the Patriots’ sixth straight state title.

Molnar won state championships in the 100 breaststroke and the 50 freestyle (23.66) and, along with Elizabeth Swiderski, Carly Bowles and Lisa Briggs, won the title in the 200 medley relay (1:50.92).

She also made up more than a second in the final leg of the 200 freestyle relay to claim a tie for second with Hoover, along with Bowles, Briggs and Doris Darbouze.

Vasha Hunt | Opelika-Auburn News
Auburn High’s Megan Molnar reacts after winning the 50-yard freestyle Saturday at the AHSAA Swimming & Diving Championships at the James E. Martin Aquatic Center in Auburn. Molnar also won the 100-yard breaststroke.

The boys 200 medley relay team of Luke Iannuzzi, Benjamin Hoerlein, Kody Coggin and Stephen Parsons also won a state title, and broke their own state record — set in Thursday’s prelims — in the process.

Parsons chased down McGill-Toolen’s anchor in the freestyle leg, touching in at 1:37.27.

Jillian Braun also won a state title for the Tigers in Friday’s 1-meter diving competition, beating out McGill-Toolen’s Sarah Dominick by 21.05 points with a five-dive mark of 387.15.

Other Tigers girls to place in the top eight were Bowles (who finished second to Molnar in the 100 breaststroke), and the eighth-place 400 freestyle relay team of Katherine McKenzie, Amy Briggs and Swiderski.

Auburn boys that placed in the top eight were J.J. Shaffer (1-meter diving), Parsons and Coggin (fourth and sixth in the 200 free), Parsons and Iannuzzi (tied for sixth in the 50 free), Coggin (seventh in the 500 free), the seventh-place 200 freestyle relay team of Darren Dai, Hoerlein, Greg Steltenpohl and Mitchell Padgett, Iannuzzi (fifth in the 100 backstroke), Hoerlein (fourth in the 100 breaststroke), and the second-place 400 freestyle team of Parsons, Coggin, Padgett and Iannuzzi.

“We’re good, we can hold it. It wasn’t just a fluke, one-year thing,” Molnar said. “And we’re not losing too many seniors, so we can do it again next year.”

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