Abby Tollefson continues to jump to the front of the pack in girls diving.

The Marshalltown senior triumphed in her first 11-dive meet of the season as part of the Bobcats’ home swimming and diving invite on Saturday morning at Marshalltown High School.

Tollefson’s final score of 512.10 puts her at the top of the 11-dive leaderboard in the state. Grinnell sophomore Camryn Russell was the runner-up with a 477.85.

“I wouldn’t say it was my cleanest work,” said Tollefson, who is a student at West Marshall. “It was a good day, but I need to work on being more crisp with my dives. It was a good starting point.”

Bobcat teammate Kate Hauser finished fifth with a 352.80. Tollefson and Hauser were two of the returning state qualifiers that competed on Saturday, along with Russell and Johnston’s Liv Miner, who was third on Saturday with a 397.30.

“Abby was clearly the favorite to win there and that’s a great place for her to start in the 11-dive,” said MHS head coach Angie Nelson. “And Kate did a nice job for her first 11-dive of the season.”

Nelson added that with only two more 11-dive meets before state-qualifying, the Bobcats will likely up their degree of difficulty in the 6-dive events in preparation.

Hauser’s score on Saturday currently ranks 13th in the state.

“It’s just a very good team atmosphere this year,” Tollefson said. “We have a lot of fun at practice, we sing and dance a lot, and I feel like the way we get the most accomplished is when we’re having fun.”

After finishing as runner-up in last year’s state meet to Grinnell’s Trista Thompson, who now dives for UNI, Tollefson knows where she wants to be at the end of her high school career.

“It’s motivated me a lot,” Tollefson said. “Obviously putting in the work at practice and getting new dives, but when it comes to it, not letting the nerves get to you and being confident that this is what I’ve been practicing for, that I can do it. … I’m willing to work as hard as it takes.”

She’s accomplished one major hurdle already as it relates to her future, recently making a verbal commitment to Iowa State University’s diving team after making an official visit to Ames last week.

“I had so much fun, all the girls are so awesome,” Tollefson said. “And it’s something that takes a little pressure off my diving season, not having to worry about where I’ll be after this year, and makes it a little bit more fun.”

The Bobcats finished third as a team across the diving and swimming events with a final team score of 180. Johnston cruised to the team title with 401 points and Lewis Central was second with 228.

Marshalltown’s swimmers didn’t capture any gold – Averie Wittkop’s silver medal in the 100-yard butterfly was the best Bobcat finish of the day – the Bobcats cut into seed times in several events.

In addition to improvement from the team’s usual frontrunners, Nelson shouted out Meredith Kodis and Alex Lasack’s cutting significant times off their season-best butterfly performances, Leia Hernandez starting strong in the 50-yard freestyle and finishing fourth.

Lesli Waltermire was third in the 50 free, Wittkop finished fourth in the 100 backstroke, Maisie Gummert had a pair of fifth-place times in the 200- and 500-yard freestyles and the Bobcats also placed fifth in the 400 freestyle relay (Waltermire, Gummert, Hernandez, Wittkop).

“This is a good indicator of where we need to just put in a little more effort,” Nelson said. “We just need to keep working on good, solid flip turns and nice push-offs and just not getting beat off the walls. … These are the kinds of things that we can see from this environment of girls where we’re seeded around the same place and make a few little tweaks and make some huge improvements.”