Congratulations to the local athletes from the combined Beatrice-Norris-Fairbury-Freeman (BNFF) swimming and diving squad who have qualified for the 2025 NSAA State Swimming and Diving Championships, which begin this week in Lincoln! 

The event begins with the diving championships all day Thursday, February 27. The girls competition begins at 10 a.m. with the boys to follow at approximately 2:30. Then the attention turns to the swimming competition, which begins with preliminaries all day (10 a.m. girls/3 p.m. boys) Friday, February 28, before the swimming finals begin at noon on Saturday, March 1.  

Athletes qualify for the state swimming and diving championships by recording a time better than the automatic standard for each event. Qualifying times in swim events are set each year by averaging the times recorded by the swimmer who finished in 18th place at the state meet over the preceding three years. Times must be achieved in an “officially scheduled meet” during the competition season. 

For example, this year the automatic qualifying time for a girl competing in the 200 Freestyle is 2:01.16 - any athlete who recorded a time better than that in an official competition this year qualifies to compete at the state championship. For comparison, the automatic standard for boys in the 200 Freestyle this year is 1:49.35. The top 32 athletes/teams that beat that standard every year are selected for the state tournament. If there are less than 32 times that hit that mark, athletes that attain a time under a secondary standard are considered. For divers, that standard is always 300 points, for both boys and girls. 

Divers will be the first group featured at the state championships this week. On the boys side, BNFF will be represented by sophomore Carter Mertz, whose season-best score of 313.65 ranks him 22nd out of 25 competitors this year. There will be no local girls competing in the diving competition on Thursday.  

Once the girls swimming competition begins on Friday, the BNFF squad will be represented by ten local individuals or teams. The event both starts and ends with relays, always a highlight of a major swim competition; kicking off the day in the 200 Medley Relay, the team (Jaedyn Baxa, Addisyn Baxa, Isabella Scheele and Avery Baumann) will be in lane seven in heat three of four. 

In individual events, junior Tabitha Crawford will be in the first heat in the 200 Free; stalwart Beatrice senior Jaedyn Baxa will be in heat three for the 50 Free, which will also feature Fairbury’s senior standout Avery Baumann in heat four. Baumann is also in heat four for the 100 Free – she had one of the five best qualifying times this year in both of those events – and sophomore Isabella Scheele will be in heat one.  

Crawford qualified for her second individual event in the 500 Free, and Baxa is in the field for the 100 Backstroke. BNFF (Jaedyn Baxa, Scheele, Sophia Meints and Baumann) will have an outside shot in the 200 Free relay if they can improve upon the time that won them the event at Greater Nebraska Championships earlier this month; and in the final event of the day, the 400 Free relay, the BNFF squad (Alyse Bassett, Petra Van Cleave, Brooke Given and Crawford) will be in lane three in the second of four heats. 

On the boys side later on Friday, BNFF will be represented by seven individuals or teams. The squad (Dru Breeden, Isaac Barber, Noah Jacobsen and Jarett Guenther) will first hit the pool in the fourth heat of the second event, the 200 Medley relay. Individually, Fairbury freshman Reid Novotny will be in heat two of the 200 Free; sophomore Dru Breeden will be in heat one for the 200 IM; and the two will both return for the 100 Butterfly, with Breeden in heat one and Novotny in heat two. 

In the final relays, BNFF (Novotny, James Given, Noah Jacobsen and Sean Carrera) will be in heat four for the 200 Free, and the squad (Carrera, Given, Breeden and Novotny) will have a shot in heat two in the final event of the day, the 400 Free – their qualifying time of 3:26.55 was the 12th best in the field.  

Competition on Thursday and Friday will be streamed on NFHS; the championships on Saturday will be televised by Nebraska Public Media. The NSAA reports tickets for Saturday’s championships at Nebraska’s Devaney Center have already sold out.  

We’ll bring you updated coverage from the 2025 NSAA Swimming and Diving Championships throughout the week as the events progress here on News Channel Nebraska, and locally on the radio on Ol’ Red 99.5 and KWBE.