EMMAUS - Northwestern Lehigh has an impressive sports program, but it doesn’t have a swimming and diving team.

That means that any students wanting to compete in those sports are essentially free agents and can train and to some extent, compete as a member of another school program.

It worked for Northwestern’s Maddy Burns, who attended Northwestern but swam with the Parkland Aquatic Club and for a while, held the state record of 2:00.48 in the 200 IM. From there, it was a swimming scholarship to North Carolina where she competed in the breaststroke and the IM, graduating in 2016.

Now, Hayden Slaski is a Tiger among Trojans.

The Northwestern freshman trains with the Parkland High School team and dives in their meets, but his score counts only toward personal records for qualifying for districts.

He qualified for the District 11 Diving championship, which was held Saturday at Emmaus High School and left with a gold medal around his neck and a trip to states next month where he will compete for a state championship.

“It feels great to be a part of Parkland’s team. It’s a dream come true,” said Slaski. “The guys at Parkland are basically my family, and I just love them so much. It’s also close enough that it still feels like home, and it’s not an issue to get there.”

Slaski and Pottsville’s Adam Klinger were locked in a battle for the top spot from their first dive on, but Slaski was just off Klinger’s pace throughout the early rounds.

Slaski had an off dive in the fifth round and fell 6.80 points behind Klinger going into the final six rounds.

Knowing he had ground to make up, Slaski went right to work in round six and nailed a forward somersault with one twist for a score of 34.20, his highest of the competition at that point. His dive helped close the gap to just .65 points.

Slaski remained the pursuer until round nine, when he put pressure on Klinger with a 29.25 score on an inward dive pike. When his turn came, Klinger executed a reverse somersault tuck for a 25.60 reward from the judges as Slaski took his first lead in the meet with a 2.80 advantage.

In the tenth round, Slaski stretched his lead to 14.80, but scored just a 14.95 on his 11th and final dive, opening the door for Klinger to take the lead. Klinger was unable to take advantage and finished with a 300.20 score on the day, while Slaski took gold with a 309.55.

“I was a little worried that he would pass me on that last dive, but fortunately I had the really good dive in round 10 and it gave me enough of a margin,” said Slaski.

While there was a battle for the top spot, Tamaqua’s Vinny Valentine battled another Pottsville diver - Colin Kline - for third. Valentine put up consistent scores throughout the meet and slowly stretched his lead over Kline from a margin of 1.75 after two dives up to a high of 22.65 points after round six. From there, Kline cut into the lead, but could never catch Valentine who defeated Kline by a score of 233.55 to 223.80 for third place.

“I felt good about my performance, I came in knowing it was going to be tough, and I really wanted to at least get third place,” said Valentine. “I was nervous about it, but I just worked really, really hard and nailed a lot of my dives to get there.”

In girls’ diving, Blue Mountain’s Hailey Scheuer took gold, with North Schuylkill’s Joyce Burian placing second.

The top two finishers earn automatic spots in the PIAA Diving championship, which will be held at Bucknell University. The boys diving finals will be on March 15, with the girls competing on March 16.