PHOTOS: DuPay Wins Diving Title, Gators Finish Second At State

Ninth-grader Bailey DuPay easily won the 1-meter diving competition Saturday afternoon to lead the to a second-place finish in the 2011 Minnesota State High School League girls swim and dive championship.

Held at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center, Northfield racked up points in 9 of 12 events to finish second in the team race.

Sartell-St. Stephen won the meet with 238 points. Northfield was second with 173 points, Hutchinson was third with 170, Visitation was fouth with 166 and Monticello was fifth with 156.

Fifth at state last season, the second-place team finish was Northfield's highest since a state championship in 1998 and tied runner-up finishes in 1999 and 2003.

"I was really happy how the way the girls responded in the second half of the meet," said longtime Northfield coach Doug Davis. "The first half of the meet and the first couple of events didn't go how the girls hoped.

"The 100 freestyle kind of got the corner turned for us," he said. "And those girls just realized we've got those two free relays at the end, we can make something happen. We want to end this meet on a good note and walk away feeling we did the bets that we could."

DuPay led the way for Northfield with a dominating performance in the Class A diving. Her score of 405.50 was more than 68 points better than the second-place finisher, Casey Nightgale of Benilde-St. Margaret's.

It was the first diving championship by a Northield girl in the state meet, according to the MSHSL record book.

Northfield placed in the top eight in all three relays, including one second and one third, both in school record times.

Northfield swam to a second-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle relay with a team of Marla Thomforde, Grete Baker, Emily Lundstrom and Emily Anderson in an All-American consideration time of 1:37.62.

Northfield's Thomforde, Lundstrom, Allie Clark and Anderson placed third in the 400-yard freestyle relay in 3:36.28.

"I couldn't be prouder of the girls and how they responded," Davis said.

Junior Anderson (53.38) and senior Thomforde (53.40) were fifth and sixth in the 100-yard freestyle, respectively.

Anderson was also seventh in the 50-yard freestyle in 24.41.

Northfield's team of Clark, Sophia Nevin, Baker and Lundstrorm was eighth in the 200-yard medley relay in 1:53.40.

Baker was eighth in the 200-yard IM in 2:13.87 and then came back with an eighth-place finish in the 100-yard butterfly (59.95).

Thomforde was 13th in the 200-yard freestyle in 2:00.32.