Edina Swimmers Win Third Straight Championship

For the third consecutive year, the Edina Hornets are the Class 2A girls state swimming and diving champions.

But in a strange twist, Lake Conference rival Minnetonka was actually poised to win the title by 44.5 points—with a new Minnesota state meet points record—before officials disqualified the team for an illegal entry in the final 400-yard freestyle relay team race.

Minnetonka Coach Dan Berve took responsibility for the team's error, which cost Minnetonka 40 points.

"That's my fault," Berve told the Star Tribune. "I did not submit that one properly."

Even with the ruling on that relay, Minnetonka still would have taken the state title. However, the Minnesota State High School League found all three Minnetonka relay teams had entered illegally. The correct swimmers were not listed on the relay cards.

Minnetonka dropped to fourth place, giving Edina its third consecutive state title with a final score of 228. Wayzata took second with 222 points, Eden Prairie claimed third at 220 and Minnetonka finished with 200.5.

"The idea of preliminaries of the state meet is simply to make it back for finals," Minnetonka swimmer Abby Saddler wrote to Patch. "Because of this, my coach didn't put our fastest girls on the preliminary relay teams. Our intention of prelims wasn't to win, but just to make it back so we would have another swim on Saturday. All along he intended to make changes in the relays from prelims to finals by putting in the fastest girls for finals only, but he forgot to make the changes on the paperwork of the entries before finals."

The Hornets had strong performances at the meet, including a state meet record in the 200-yard relay. Madeleine Eden, Olivia Anderson, Heather Laedtke and Rachel Wittmer finished the race with a combined time of 1:43.97.

Anderson also took first place in the 100-yard breaststroke with an automatic All-America time of 1:02.96, while Heather Laedtke took fifth place with an automatic All-Conference time of 1:04.72. Yasmeen Almog finished second in 1-meter diving for the Hornets.

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