Germantown Girls Break National High School 400 Free Relay Record at Easterns

The girls of Germantown Academy have downed a National High School Record in the girls’ 400 free relay, swimming a 3:21.63 at the Eastern Interscholastic Swimming & Diving Championships on Saturday (a Northeastern prep school championship meet). They swam a 3:21.63, which downed the record that their predecessors set in 2006 at 3:22.34.

This year’s aedition of the Germantown relay had:

Shannon McKernan, sophomore, 49.93
Meagan Dollard, junior, 50.35
Madison Visco, sophomore, 51.22
Rachel Zilinskas, senior, 50.13

The only of the four who is graduating is Rachel Zilinskas, the anchor, whose future will only get brighter at the monster freestyle program of Georgia where she’ll head next season.

The old record was held by no slouch of a group either. It included future All-Americans Katie Riefenstahl, Teresa Crippen, and Alicia Aemisegger, along with future Penn swimmer Sara Coenen. That’s four great students as well, as two ended up in the Ivy Leagues (Coenen to Penn, Aemisegger to Princeton) and the other two scored numerous academic honors during their careers (Crippen at Florida, Riefenstahl at Texas).

Hershey High School from Pennsylvania still holds the public school record in a 3:22.85.

Among other top times at this meet included a 4:41.40 from Zilinskas to win the 500 free. She also won the 200 IM in 2:01.54 She’s got awesome potential when she heads to Georgia next year (another program that is high-flying academically in regards to their swim team); even though they graduate Romano and Schmitt, they’ll reload as they always do.

McKernan was a 1:47.65 to win the women’s 200 free, matched by a new Meet Record from Michael Nunan in the 200 free with a 1:36.56. That broke a 21-year old record held by Jim Wells, another Peddie swimmer, from the 1991 meet at 1:36.69. The men’s 200 freestyles at the high school level have made a bigger leap than any other race, it seems like, as 1:36’s and better have become almost commonplace at high school championships.

Other meet records include a 54.17 in the 100 fly from Baldwin sophomore Valerie Yoshimura, and a 1:33.35 from the Germantown 200 free relay. The Peddie boys also became a new Meet Record holder on the 400 free relay, where they swam a 2:59.98. By our count, that makes them the third high school relay (all in the last two seasons) under the three-minute barrier.

Full meet results available here.

In This Story

4
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

4 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
11 years ago

The Peddie boys were very good. medley relay- 1:31.53; Nunan, who won the 200 free in 1:36.56 also won the 500 in 4:18.88; Bradley Cline won the 200 IM in 1:48.31; Patrick Park won the 100 fly in 48.74 after posting a 48.62 in prelims, and won the 100 free in 45.32; 200 free relay- 1:23.84; Joe Lane won the 100 back in 49.18 and Cline was 3rd in 49.89; Forrest Davis won the 100 breast in 55.53; and the 400 free relay was under 3 minutes. One of the best Peddie teams ever, and that’s saying something. Five new team records, and the last time there was a new record on the boy’s record board at eddie was 1998.… Read more »

11 years ago

That’s an amazing swim.

Katrina Radke
Reply to  Mike Lewis
11 years ago

CONGRATS TO GERMANTOWN ACADEMY!!!! SO PROUD OF ALL OF THE GIRLS AND GUYS!

Reply to  Katrina Radke
11 years ago

Absolutely! Kudos to Coach Shoulberg and the whole GA family. Great to see that the Crippens were there.

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

Read More »