Seven swimmers from the Covington Y won medals in the finals at the State GRPA championships held in Carrolton recently.

The meet featured more than 1,200 swimmers competing in five different age groups.
Skylar Patterson reached the finals in two events for 9-10 year old girls, placing eighth in the 50-yard freestyle and the 25-yard backstroke.

Dylan Weathersby placed sixth in the 13-14 year old 50-yard backstroke with a time of 29.74.

In the 15-18 age group the Covington Y had five boys place in the finals.

The 200-yard medley relay team won the bronze medal in a time of 1:45.37 and the freestyle relay, consisting of the Ellwanger and Mitchell twins, placed sixth with a time of 1:35.66

The medley relay had Jack Mitchell swimming backstroke, Robbie Ellwanger breaststroke, Joey Ellwanger butterfly and Kyle Donner swimming the anchor leg freestyle.

The medley relay dropped three seconds from prelims to finals to take the bronze medal. Robbie Ellwanger placed fifth in the 50-yard breaststroke with a time of 30.23 seconds.

Joey Ellwanger placed fifth in the 100 free with a time of 50.95 seconds, and eighth in the 50 fly with a time of 25.47 seconds. Jack Mitchell placed fifth in the 100 individual medley with a time of 58.05 seconds.

After qualifying second in the morning preliminary heats , Jack Mitchell won the gold medal in the 50-yard backstroke with a personal best time of 26.23 seconds. The 2012 GRPA State championships featured large teams from Forsyth, Gwinnett, Cobb and DeKalb counties.