Diver Justice Murray led the way on a fantastic weekend by the Republic swim and dive team at the Southwest Missouri Championships held in Springfield Friday and Saturday.
Murray blew away his personal best, scoring 392.60 to finish fourth overall. And more importantly, his score was well above the state qualification cutoff. That means he’ll be competing at the state meet for the second year in a row. It’s an accomplishment he wasn’t necessarily expecting when the weekend began.
“They raised the score for qualifying . I was just going for the goal to get 370, and the qualifying score is 375,” Murray said. “Then once I did that last dive and saw that I got 392, was like, ‘Okay, I’m doing better than I thought.'”
Murray said he focused on technique during his final practices leading up to the weekend.
“Before every dive, I really focused on breathing and just went over the motion (and) muscle memory in my head,” he said. “I was like, ‘Okay, just do that and you’ll be fine.’ I was just saying that to myself on every dive, and it worked out.”
Now Murray will wait to find out whether any teammates join him at the state meet in St. Peters. That’s a lot more likely than it was before the weekend started, thanks to an astonishing race by the 400 Yard Freestyle Relay team of Easton Bruton, Bryce Martin, Brady Lewis, and Seth Lock. They finished in 3:37.14 in Saturday’s final. That was 12 seconds faster than the team’s previous best time, and it put them high enough in the state rankings that qualifying for state is a possibility. They’ll have to wait to see what other times are submitted around the state before they know whether they’ll join Murray in St. Peters.
The 400 relay team’s time was one of several school records set by the Tigers over the weekend. Here’s a list of their full results in the finals Saturday:
200 Yard Individual Medley
Bryce Martin 2:11.20 5th (School Record)
50 Yard Freestyle
Seth Lock 23.80 12th (School Record)
100 Yard Butterfly
Seth Lock 58.86 7th (School Record)
100 Yard Backstroke
Brady Lewis 1:04.29 14th (Personal Record)
Bryce Martin 1:00.05 5th
100 Yard Breaststroke
Shael Wilson 1:19.26 18th
400 Yard Freestyle Relay
3:37.14 8th (School Record)