University of Houston Athletics
Diving Gears Up for NCAA Zone D Championships
3/10/2010 12:00:00 AM | Swimming & Diving
March 10, 2010
HOUSTON - The University of Houston diving team will travel to College Station, Texas on March 12-14 to compete in the 2010 NCAA Zone D Diving Championships on the Texas A&M Campus.
Four Cougar divers, including Anastasia Pozdniakova, Lacey Truelove, Jessalyn Almond and Julia Lonnegren, will represent Houston at the meet. All four athletes will complete in each of the three diving events.
The meet will begin on Friday at 11 a.m. with the 1-meter preliminaries with the finals scheduled for a 1 p.m. start. On Saturday, the women will compete in the 3-meter preliminaries at 3 p.m., while the finals are scheduled for a 5 p.m. start. Competition on Sunday will conclude with the platform event. The prelims will start at 11 a.m. with a 1 p.m. start to the finals.
At the conclusion of the meet, 12 competitors will qualify for the NCAA Championships on March 18-20 in Purdue, Ind., on the campus of Purdue University. Houston has never qualified more than three divers to the NCAA Championships and this year head diving coach Jane Figueiredo hopes that changes.
"Obviously with so many spots available to qualify for the NCAA Championships we are hoping that all four of our divers qualify," Figueiredo said. "If all four qualify that would be the most that we have ever qualified."
Last year at the Zone D Championships, Pozdniakova won both the 1- and 3-meter diving events and was the runner-up in the platform competition. Almond turned in a 16th place finish in the 3-meter event and was 24th in the 1-meter competition.
Pozdniakova won the 3-meter event by scoring 763.55 points, 114.25 more than the second place finisher. Her 1-meter win of 676.15 set a school record and her platform score was a personal-best 262.70 and is the fifth best performance in school history.
"The goal always is to score points, and Anastasia has a great opportunity to defend her titles, even though that would be a tough feat to accomplish," Figueiredo said. "We never take anything for granted, and we will go into this weekend with our best game and whatever the outcome it should be a great competition."
Fans can follow all the action of the Zone D Championships by going to DiveMeets.com.
Players Mentioned
