Saline High School Breaks 200 Medley High School Record By Slim Margin

HOLLAND, Michigan, March 8. THE Michigan boys' Division I swimming and diving championships started off in the best way possible, as Saline High School blasted their way through the 200 medley relay prelims and set a national public high school record by the slimmest of margins.

The squad of David Boland, Josh Ehrman, Adam Whitener and Michael Bundas swam a 1:30.26 to take down the record set by Hershey High School by .01.

Saline 'A' 1:32.58 1:30.26 qD1
1) Boland, David 12 2) Ehrman, Josh 12
3) Whitener, Adam 12 4) Bundas, Michael 12
22.80 47.89 (25.09)
1:09.47 (21.58) 1:30.26 (20.79)

Comparative splits for Hershey High School (2010):
Nolan (21.82)
Ruddle (26.58)
Grier (21.40)
Young (20.47)
1:30.27

That record by Hershey featured a quick 21.82 backstroke leg by David Nolan, who had an impressive weekend in 2010, setting three individual national high school records at the Pennsylvania state championships.

Though Saline was behind Hershey's pace by about a second after the backstroke, they got ahead of the pace by four tenths with Ehrman's blazing breaststroke leg. That leg proved to be the key for Saline, as it was the only one faster than Hershey's four splits.

Saline has its work cut out for the overall national record, set by The Bolles School in November with a 1:28.02. For comparison sake, here are the splits from that relay:

Murphy (21.09)
Schooling (25.48)
Booth (21.81)
Condorelli (19.64)
1:28.02

All four swimmers returned to the pool to qualify as the top seed in at least one individual event each. Boland will be the top seed in both the 100 fly (48.59) and 100 back(50.00). Ehrman is the top qualifier in the 200 IM with a 1:48.30 and the 100 breast with a 56.15, while Whitener will look to win the 200 free (1:39.00) immediately after tomorrow's medley relay final, as well as the 100 free with his 44.81 top seed time. As for Bundas, he's the top seed in the 50 free with a 21.21.

Saline also is putting its top swimmers in the 200 free relay, and they'll go into tomorrow's finals as the second seed behind Brother Rice with a 1:25.28 to Brother Rice's 1:25.19. Both schools will have to post times in the very low 20-second range to threaten Hershey's public school record of 1:21.01. As for Bolles' overall national record of 1:19.27 … well, that's a different stratosphere altogether.

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