A certificate of recognition will be presented to the Richard Montgomery High School’s 2024 State Champion Girls Swim Team at the Rockville Mayor and City Council meeting on Monday, April 15th. Full story on their season that we originally published on February 26th can be seen below:
This past Saturday, the Richard Montgomery High School Girls’ Swim & Dive team followed up their first ever Metros win with their first ever State Championship.
Over the past few weeks, the RM girls and the Walter Johnson High School girls have been competing energetically. Two weeks ago, at the prestigious Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship, commonly called “Metros,” the RM Girls traded the lead in a back-and-forth manner with WJ. There was a tie between the two teams heading into the final event, the 400 Freestyle Relay. In the final leg of the race, the RM Girls pulled away and secured the win.
At Metros, Sarah Eliason (Senior) earned a 1st place in both the 200 IM and 100 Butterfly events. In addition, Livia Venditti (Senior) secured a 2nd place in the 200 Freestyle and a 3rd place in the 100 Backstroke. Together they were joined by Julie Schwieters (Junior) and Lauren Gotting (Junior) to win the 200 Freestyle Relay. Anna Mitchum (Junior) joined the 400 Freestyle relay that eventually won the meet. Other standout performances for the RM Girls came from Abby Yo (Senior), Natalia Evans-Gibson (Senior), Jordan Johnson (Junior), Arina Bouvier (Junior – Diver), Kiana Alguard (Junior), and Nyah Frantz (Freshman).
The following week at the 4A3A West Regional Meet, the WJ girls took the lead over RM and never looked back. They secured the win led by Healey Morgan (Senior), Madeleine Simmons (Junior), Isla Bartholomew (Junior), Zoe McGee (Junior), Anne Mulkey (Sophomore), Elanor Saybolt (Freshman), Addie Pollitt (Junior), Pearl Shelton (Junior), and Emma Burlina (Senior).
Those same RM and WJ girls, who provided the intense back and forth during Metros and Regionals, duked it out for a third weekend in a row at the 4A3A State Championship Meet this past Saturday at the University of Maryland. At the final showdown between the teams, the RM and WJ girls both swam tremendously with the RM girls eventually coming away with the win and their first ever State Championship.
RM Coach Akshay Gandhi and WJ Coach Jamie Grimes both indicated that their favorite race was the girls 200 IM where WJ’s Madeleine Simmons edged out RM’s Sarah Eliason by 0.01 seconds to claim the victory at States after Sarah had won at Metros. Their racing was representative of all the close racing that the teams did this last month.
Courtesy of Akshay Gandhi
