Tobin Leads St. Joe Girls to Eighth at State Meet

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- St. Joseph's Jessie Tobin placed third in the 500 yard freestyle at the Massachusetts Division 2 Swimming and Diving Championships on Saturday at MIT.

 

Tobin, a sohpomore, clocked a time of 5 minutes, 8.36 seconds to edge Holyoke Catholic junior Kristyn Popowski (5:08.88) for third. The event was won by Weston's Leeza Shashkova, who finished in 5:00.74.

 

Tobin also swam a leg on St. Joe's 200 free relay quartet, which finished fourth. Emma Whitney, Elizabeth Bernardy, Ellie Field and Tobin combined to finish in 1:44.42, more than a full second faster than their seed time and about five seconds behind the champions from Weston (1:38.45).

 

Weston easily won the team title with 300 points, swamping second-place Marblehead (211). St. Joseph finished eighth out of 36 teams at the meet with 105 points.

 

Tobin also finished seventh in the 50 free with a time of 25.35. Marblehead's Kyle Cronin was first in 24.27.

 

Field finished sixth in the 100 free, swimming a time of 54.72 that was amore than a full second faster than her seed time in the event. Field was ninth in the 200 free (2:00.18). Both those events were won by Longmeadow's Jerrica Li.

 

St. Joe's Whitney was 12th in the 100 backstroke in 1:02.08. Marblehead's Ellie Ronan won the state championship in 57.81.

 

Bernardy and teammate Elizabeth Bartlett both competed for St. Joe in the 100 breaststroke. Bernardy finished 10th in 1:11.70. Bartlett was 16th in 1:12.89 in an event won by Wayland's Molly Pierce (1:04.88).

 

The quartet of Whitney, Bernardy, Field and Tobin combined to place 10th in the state in the 200 medley relay, finishing in 1:56.39. Weston won that relay in 1:47.48, which broke the meet record by .28 seconds and missed the state record by nine one-hundredths of a second.