ST. PAUL — The Class A state swim and dive preliminaries were held at the University of Minnesota on Thursday and Friday. Marshall’s Finley Pelz competed in two events and Autumn Deutz in another, with Pelz advancing to today’s state finals in the 500-yard freestyle event.

Pelz finished 12th in the 500 free preliminaries, swimming a time of 5:21.7 to beat out her seed time of 5:22.1. She finished just 0.43 seconds back of 11th place Mallory Knutson of Orono. Visitation’s Katie Miller finished first in the preliminary round at 5:03.85, followed by Chisago Lakes’ Kaia Casey and Benilde-St. Margaret’s Emma Rudowsy at 5:06.78 and 5:07.97.

Pelz also competed in the 200-yard freestyle event, in which she placed 23rd at 2:01.35. St. Anthony Village’s Bridget Myers claimed the last spot in the finals with a time of 1:59.76 to place 16th while Orono’s Graycin Andreen had the fastest prelim time at 1:52.26.

In the one-meter dive, Deutz escaped the first round of preliminaries but couldn’t make it through the semifinals. The junior’s first-round score of 140.00 put her in 18th place, with the top 20 of the 32 divers qualifying for the semifinals. She scored a 213.50 in the semifinals, however, leaving her in 20th place. Becker’s Karli Kirk was the final qualifier for the finals at 225.55 while Austin’s Alayna Kennedy had the high score of the semifinals at 318.45.

Pelz will now compete for a state medal today at noon.