Team hardware eluded Aurora area teams at this season’s Class 5A girls state swim meet, but plenty of medals found their way back to the city.
All four local programs who earned points over two days of competition at the Veterans Memorial Aquatic Center in early February — Cherokee Trail, Grandview, Regis Jesuit and Smoky Hill — have at least one representative on the 2025-26 Aurora Sentinel All-Aurora Girls Swim Team, which is determined primarily by performance at the state meet.
Full 2025-26 Aurora Sentinel All-Aurora Girls Swim team, here
Regis Jesuit came into the season with a young team that had the potential talent to stay within range of powerhouse Cherry Creek, which had won championships in each of the past three seasons with the Raiders in second.
Coach Nick Frasersmith’s Regis Jesuit team found itself bumped out of that runner-up spot this season, however, as Fairview put on an exceptional performance in prelims and finished it off with a 37-point edge over the Raiders for second place behind the dominant Bruins, who won a sixth consecutive state title.
Senior Lexi Stramel provided the experience a young Regis Jesuit team needed and she contributed plenty of points as well.
In a repeat of the previous season, Stramel earned the All-Aurora spots in the 200 and 500 yard freestyles. Stramel (who held off Smoky Hill’s Cameryn Walkup for both spots) made her biggest strides in the 200, in which she came into state as the No. 11 seed, but swam more than three seconds faster than her seed time and moved up to seventh in the championship final. She tied for sixth place in the 500, which was a bit of a drop from her pre-meet position.
Regis Jesuit had two other two-event All-Aurora winners in sophomore Elsa Osborne and freshman Aria Thomas.
Osborne was the lone four-event All-Aurora performer as she contributed to the 200 yard medley and 400 yard freestyle relays, which both earned fourth-place finishes. Additionally, she led Aurora area performers in both the sprint freestyles with a fourth-place finish in the 50 and seventh-place result in the 100.
In her state debut, Thomas made an exceptionally big splash in the 200 yard individual medley, as she came in as the No. 13 seed, yet clocked a time nearly six seconds faster in the championship final to take third. Thomas made a more modest gain in the 100 butterfly (moving from eighth to fourth), but had a big time drop.
Stramel, Osborne and Thomas teamed with junior Ava Terella on the 400 freestyle relay team, while Terella was part of the All-Aurora 200 medley relay team for a third straight season as she joined fellow junior Mia Staubli, Osborne and freshman Natalie Worden for fourth.
Smoky Hill scored 147 points for its highest total in 15 years and two All-Aurora performers helped make that possible for coach Scott Cohen’s team.
Junior Lyla Bailey got the ball rolling for the Buffs in the diving competition, as she became the program’s first finalist since 2019 and went on to finish seventh with a season-best total of 430.05 points.
Senior Mya Noffsinger grabbed the All-Aurora spot in the 100 backstroke as she dropped a season-best time of 57.37 seconds in the final to make the area’s top squad for the first time in her career.
Senior Emma Busta, junior Makenna Dyk, sophomore Paige Gust and freshman Talia Burleson of Grandview (which tied for ninth) came into state seeded 13th and surged all the way to third in the final, leapfrogging Regis Jesuit in the process.
Cherokee Trail’s All-Aurora representative is junior Natalie Daum, the state runner-up in the 100 yard breaststroke, though she had the fastest time in the state of 1:02.16 set at the Rex Abelein Invitational.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
