The Powell state swim team grew by one last week and five more swimmers added qualifying times in new events as the Panthers won their last home event and swam to fourth in the Worland Invitational.

Jake Magill became the 12th Panther to qualify for state competition with a 165-point performance in the Powell Aquatic Center on Friday. Magill was on track to qualify last week when he failed to complete his fifth dive. This time he successfully executed the backward somersault with a twist and followed with a double somersault to earn his first trip to state.

The Powell state swim team grew by one last week and five more swimmers added qualifying times in new events as the Panthers won their last home event and swam to fourth in the Worland Invitational.

Jake Magill became the 12th Panther to qualify for state competition with a 165-point performance in the Powell Aquatic Center on Friday. Magill was on track to qualify last week when he failed to complete his fifth dive. This time he successfully executed the backward somersault with a twist and followed with a double somersault to earn his first trip to state.

The Powell Panthers warmed up with a dual meet win over Greybull/Riverside last week and then went undefeated in the Buffalo duals to earn an 8-0 record for the weekend.

A Powell native was one of 30 soldiers demonstrating their marksmanship skills last weekend in preparation for the 2012 Warrior Games this spring.

Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Bessler, a 1991 graduate of Powell High School, demonstrated his skills at the University of Texas-El Paso, hoping to earn a spot on the Army shooting team for the games, an Olympic-style event for members of the military who are wounded, injured or ill.

Among the efforts to encourage Wyoming high school students to pursue higher education is an increased focus on making enrollment in college courses available to students while they still are in high school.

For many years, high school students have had access to dual enrollment, which gives them the ability to enroll and attend classes at Wyoming’s community colleges. They may have traveled to the college or attended through a distance learning set-up.

Since we just survived the political circuses in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seems like a good time to comment on political rhetoric—you know, the stuff political campaigns use to attack the other guys in the race for office.

Public lands and their management are a perennial point of discussion in northwestern Wyoming.

For some time now, we have been reporting on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s development of a land use plan for federal lands in the Big Horn Basin, and recently the U.S. Forest Service began the task of drafting a similar plan for the Shoshone National Forest.