SCRANTON \u2013 Scranton Prep\u2019s Rebecca Oakes continued to build upon a remarkable high school swimming legacy.<\/p>\n
For the second consecutive year, the junior had a gold rush as the standout star in the girls\u2019 Les Richards Swimming Championships on Saturday afternoon at Scranton High School.<\/p>\n
Last season\u2019s Times-Tribune Female Swimmer of the Year, Oakes, won the 100-yard butterfly in a meet record time and the 100 freestyle. She was also a part of two winning relay teams.<\/p>\n
In her career, Oakes has won 10 gold medals and a pair of silvers at the Les Richards Championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really happy,\u201d Oakes said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting to do this well at all. I broke some barriers for myself, and this is really great. I have high hopes for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the girls\u2019 meet, Oakes won back-to-back events. She has been battling illness in the last week, but won gold in the 100 fly in 56.79. That broke the meet record of 58.48 set by Scranton Prep\u2019s Haley Thier in 2018.<\/p>\n
Oakes followed that with a win in the 100 free. She beat Elk Lake\u2019s Brynn Warriner, the 50 free champion, in 52.99.<\/p>\n
In her relay golds, Oakes joined Eva Kaszuba, the 100 breaststroke champion, Sophia Galko, and Ella Schofield, the 200 IM champion, in the 200 free relay. She teamed with Schofield, Myla Kopa, and Anna Millett to win the 400 free relay, where she supplied an exclamation point with a 100 split time of 51.8.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was incredible,\u201d Oakes said. \u201cI expected us to get second. When I saw the race was so close, I was like, \u201cDang it, I have to work.\u201d Seeing my coach and saying what my time was before I got out of the water made me happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy for everyone, because we all swam so well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abington Heights\u2019 Hadley Pallman, who won two gold medals last season, set a meet record in the 500 free. She had a strong final half of the race to finish ahead of Hazleton Area\u2019s Lia Ochs, the 200 free champion, in 5:18.04. That beat the previous mark of 5:18.04 set in 2018 by Wyoming Seminary\u2019s Skylar Roerig.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel super excited,\u201d Pallman said. \u201cI just tried to keep pace with my competition. I was really excited about the time. That is a PR (personal record), and I didn\u2019t know that I could go that fast. I wasn\u2019t expecting that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schofield won the 200 IM in 2:15.50, and Kaszuba won the 100 breaststroke for a second straight season, in 1:04.81, just missing the meet and pool record of 1:04.80. Schofield was second and Kopa fourth in a good event for the Classics.<\/p>\n
Kopa, Kaszuba, Galko, and Millett also won the 200 medley relay for Scranton Prep.<\/p>\n
Warriner won the 50 for the second time in her career. She also won gold in the sprint in 2024 and won the 100 free last season.<\/p>\n
Tunkhannock\u2019s Kaitlyn Keown won the 100 back (1:01.16).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2013 Scranton Prep\u2019s Rebecca Oakes continued to build upon a remarkable high school swimming legacy. For the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[305,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-114332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-high-school-sports","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}