Panka, Busch advance to state

New Prague High School will have two representatives at the State Swimming and Diving tournament.

Junior Cassie Panka qualified in two events. She placed fifth in the 200-yard freestyle with a qualifying time of 2 minutes, 1.86 seconds, and was third in the 500 freestyle with a qualifying time of 5:25.04.

Meanwhile, Trojan senior Laura Busch placed fourth in diving with a score of 336.4 points to qualify for the state meet.

While Busch is the fourth diver from New Prague to have qualified for a state meet, Panka is the first Trojan swimmer to have qualified in a swimming event.

Class A diving preliminaries are Thursday, Nov. 19, beginning at noon. Swimming preliminaries begin at noon on Friday, Nov. 20. Finals in both swimming and diving begin at noon on Saturday, Nov. 21.

New Prague placed 10th of 11 teams at the Section 1A meet, which was held at Ellis Middle School in Austin.

For more, read the November 19 edition of The New Prague Times.