St. Ignatius Athletics
Wildcat Swimming
April 11, 2025

The SI versus St. Francis meet on Thursday, April 10th will go down in history as one of the fastest dual meets ever at SI. On SI's senior day, the all star duo of Elaine Birkhold (junior) and Ellie Burkhardt (senior) made sure that the senior class would end their dual meet careers in style against a very fast St. Francis squad.

Elaine Birkhold kicked things off with an electrifying performance in the 200im. She became the first SI swimmer to set both a school and pool record in a single swim. Her 2:03.74 shattered not only her old team record of 2:05.00 but the pool record from 2016. 

Not to be outdone, Ellie Burkhardt just 30 minutes later completed the same impressive feat breaking the team and pool record in the 100 freestyle in a smoking fast time of 50.87. This broke Coco Quill's (current UCSB swimmer) team record from last year and a pool record from a decade and half ago by Maddy Shaeffer, a 14 time Collegiate All American for Stanford and 3 time CCS champion for St Francis.

Both Elaine and Ellie received All American Consideration times with these two performances, a designation usually achieved at CCS or the state meets at the end of the year.

With the meet still hanging in the balance, the final legendary performance came from Elaine in the 500 free to put the meet away. She broke her own team record almost breaking the 5 minute barrier going 5:00.33.

As a whole, this senior class led the SI swim and dive team to an undefeated record at home at Herbst Natatorium and only lost 1 dual meet in their 4 years at SI.

Congratulations to Elaine, Ellie and all our seniors on an epic day at Herbst Natatorium.