(Lander, WY) – As of yesterday, November 8, the Lander Valley High School Lady Tigers officially became the 2024 3A Swimming and Diving State champions.
As is customary with State win celebrations in Lander, the team was escorted through Lander’s Main Street by local fire and police crews, with a trail of proud, car-honking parents in tow.
The celebration train culminated with a stop at the Bruce Gresley Aquatic Center, in order to uphold the swimming tradition of taking a dive into the pool and then into the hot tub, which you can see all of in the video below.
County 10 also chatted with head coach Erik DeClue, who said the win “feels great.”
“This team, we had a young team, but they all worked their butts off this year. We knew we were going to be strong at State, but we went there, kind of made a statement, and set five school records.”
DeClue went on to share that the girls started off strong with a 200-medley relay, which they won and broke the school records for.
He then pointed out that Lady Tigers Lara Robertson and Vayda Havens fought it out for the 200, both breaking the school record and taking first and second place.
“Then just throughout the day, we had so many kids taking off like seven seconds in the 200’s, three seconds in the 100. Everybody was amazing.”
DeClue also pointed out how young this team is to be putting out the numbers they did this year.
“We have 21 underclassmen, but again, a lot of them were scoring points at State, and scoring high points at State.”
While DeClue and crew were in celebration mode, he said this young team is already looking forward to what they can accomplish next year.
“We have one or two more goals that we want to accomplish, especially going into next year. I think we have a shot at breaking a few more State records if we are on point.”
County 10 will post a more in-depth breakdown of the State competition in the forthcoming days, but until then enjoy some more celebration photos below.
