Colton Storseth was confident he could drop time and advance to the consolation finals of the 100-yard butterfly in his first individual trip to the state Class A boys swimming and diving meet.
Storseth, who competed at state in the 200 freestyle relay last year, fell short of fulfilling both goals as the Park Rapids sophomore clocked a 58.66 during Friday's preliminaries at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center. That resulted in a 20th-place finish and left Storseth out of the consolation finals. The top-eight swimmers advanced to the finals while the next eight reached the consolation finals.
Storseth, who was seeded No. 20 out of 22 state qualifiers, advanced to state by placing fourth at the Section 4A meet with a lifetime best of 58.38. That time moved Storseth up to the No. 5 spot on the school's all-time list, trailing Jonah Winter's 53.04, Clay Eberhart's 56.48, Kent Fritze's 56.99 and Dan Branham's 57.50 and moving him ahead of Jim Welch's 58.86.
Northfield junior Matt Gallagher clocked a winning time of 52.00 during preliminaries. The cut-off time for the finals was a 56.02 by Paul Jerve of Montevideo and the cut-off time for the consolation finals was a 57.80 by Detroit Lakes' Luke Pechmann. Gallagher dropped his preliminary time to a 51.22 to win the state title on Saturday.
"Colton swam well," said Park Rapids head coach Todd Fritze. "He was in it the whole way. His time went up a little bit, but it was a good experience for him."
