Berlitz swims to two golds at districts

EMMAUS — The spaciousness of Parkland High School’s pool is a good setting for the District 11 swimming championships, but when a power outage hit the school Friday, officials hurried to find a suitable place for the event. It turned out that they decided upon Emmaus High School, a much more, shall we say, intimate setting.

That setting turned out to be to the liking of Marian Catholic junior Danny Berlitz, who thrived on the energy of the setting to take two gold medals.

Berlitz capped off his weekend with a gold in the 500 freestyle on Sunday, but his most impressive performance came on Saturday when he not only captured gold in the 200 IM, but also easily set a new district record with a time of 1:52.33, eclipsing the old mark of 1:54.02 that he set a year ago.

“It’s a lot more closed in, so the energy here is a lot more compact, there are a lot more people squeezed into one area and you can just feel the energy,” said Berlitz. “It’s six lanes, which is a benefit, because you can see everybody in the pool.

“I don’t really care where I swim as long as I can swim in districts and get to states. It [the energy] definitely helped.”

At times, the noise reached a deafening pitch and the swimmers didn’t seem to mind that they were squeezed in around the pool. The seating area was overflowing and a remote viewing section with closed circuit television was set up to accommodate fans who couldn’t squeeze into the smaller facility.

The setting also didn’t bother Marian Catholic’s Maddie Dando, who took gold in the 100 backstroke and silver in the 200 IM. Dando took the backstroke event by a second-and-a-half over Bethlehem Catholic’s Lauren Hull. While the IM isn’t Dando’s best event, you wouldn’t have known it by her performance on Saturday.

Dando wanted to focus on the 100 backstroke and bowed out of doing the 100 freestyle because it was scheduled too close to the backstroke for her to prepare for the backstroke. Instead of the freestyle, she chose to see what she could do in the IM and came away satisfied.

“My fly is awful and I knew that coming in, so I knew I was going to be behind, but I knew that if I was strong with my backstroke, I could catch up,” said Dando. “I knew that I really had to kick and I could see everybody on the backstroke and could see that I was starting to catch up, so it made me feel a little better.”

While Tamaqua’s Lexi Kerstetter finished just out of the medals in the 100 backstroke, she took gold in Saturday’s 200-freestyle. Kerstetter took nearly four-seconds off of her qualifying time of 2:04.33 to win the event.

“It’s amazing. I never thought this would happen to me, because I had to drop a lot of time and in practice, I worked really hard for it,” said Kerstetter. “I think that I’ve improved with my swim team and they’ve pushed me and when they saw that I would start to slack off a little, they would push me and get me going.”

Panther Valley got strong showings from a pair of freshmen.

Emily Newton came in as the top seed in the 100 breaststroke, but a big performance from Notre Dame-Green Pond’s Gianni Farina prevented Newton from taking gold. Newton finished second in the breaststroke and seventh in the 200 IM. Panther teammate Jacqueline Kokinda turned in two third-place performances. Kokinda captured bronze in the 200 freestyle on Saturday and also in the 500 freestyle on Sunday.

TOUGH TIMES AT PARKLAND ... A week after a fire destroyed two-dozen busses at Parkland High School, the storm that moved through the area on Friday knocked out power on Friday just as officials were getting ready to open the doors for the district meet. The facility at Parkland has eight competition lanes and a warm-up pool and a spacious seating area for fans. Emmaus has just six lanes, no warm up area and much friendlier confines when it comes to seating.

TEAM BATTLES ... Allentown Central Catholic took home the 2A girls team championship with Blue Mountain finishing as the runner-up. Tamaqua finished sixth. On the boys side, Pottsville took the team title with Blue Mountain again finishing second. Tamaqua finished 10th.

THE WAITING BEGINS ... While gold medalists are guaranteed a spot in states, others will have to wait to see if they can “bid-in” for spots. The PIAA event will be held in two weeks at Bucknell University.