Karnataka capped their excellent showing at the 30th National Junior Aquatic championship by claiming the team title on the event's concluding day at the Talkatora swimming complex in New Delhi on Saturday.
Maharashtra launched one last assault on the coveted trophy by winning five of the 16 events in the under-17 and under-14 categories, but their tally of 16 gold, 24 silver and as many bronze fell way short of Karnataka's 53 gold, 30 silver and 16 bronze medals.
Pariskshit Shetty brought home the u-17 boys' 100 metre freestyle gold for Maharashtra but Karnataka hardly loosened their grip on the title, winning the girls' 100m event besides snatching both the boys' and girls' 100m golds in the under-14 category.
Karnataka's points tally of 714 was also way ahead of Maharashtra, their closest rival, who managed 442 - a huge margin of 272 points.
The strong Karnataka swimmers also walked away with the individual best swimmer awards. Rehan Poncha (u-17) and Rohit Hawaldar (u-14) won the boys' titles, while V Sivaranjani (u-17) and Shubha C (u-14) bagged the girls' titles.
Shubha won her fifth gold on Friday, twice improving upon the national record to win the u-14 50m butterfly in 30.79 seconds. She had ealier timed 31.31 in the trials in the morning, 00.16s better than the previous timing set by Mansi Shelke of Maharashtra two years ago.
M Vaishnavi of Karnataka clinched the silver while P Bhuvaneshari came in third.
But the day belonged to Hawaldar who clinched a photo finish over Tamil Nadu's Suresh Kumar in the u-14 boys' 100m freestyle for his fifth gold in the meet.
Hawaldar's timing of 1 minute 00.53 seconds was far behind the national record of 55.41s but a fraction better than Kumar's 1m:00.94s while Maharashtra Vivek Shanbhag took the bronze with a timing of 1:01.22s.
Hawaldar had earlier won the 400m freestyle, 400m individual medley in which also he now has the best ever Indian performance, 200m butterfly and the 200m individual medley.
M S Niveditha took the u-15 girls' 100m free style gold in 1m:05.36s, pushing behind Justine Mellocstro of Maharashtra and state-mate Steffi Antony Thomas to the second and third positions respectively.
Maharashtra reigned in the 200m back stroke events except event in which Karnataka clinched the gold medal through N S Abhiram.
