Courtesy: USA Diving
MORGANTOWN, West Virginia – Olympic silver medalists Andrew Capobianco and Delaney Schnell won national titles in men’s 3-meter and women’s 10-meter Tuesday at the USA Diving National Championships.
Their wins also earned them spots on the U.S. team for this summer’s World Aquatics Championships. Silver medalists Tyler Downs and Nike Agunbiade also qualified for the world team in the individual events. Schnell and Downs had already qualified for the world team in synchronized diving events earlier in the championships.
In the individual men’s 3-meter contest, Capobianco scored 887.20 points over two lists of dives, highlighted by 94.50 points on his reverse 3 ½ tuck in the final, to win his fifth career national title and fourth individually on 3-meter.
Capobianco was pleased with his performance, especially given his results at a World Cup meet in Montreal earlier this month.
“I thought I had some good things from each list. For me, I think the thing that I was most happy about was the consistency of my backs and reverses. That’s something that we’ve been really working on, especially after Montreal, where I had pretty big misses on those dives,” Capobianco said. “It was nice that all the work we put in last week – I did a lot of backs and reverses last week – paid off. We just need to dial in on the little things.”
Downs was consistent in the final and finished with 835.30 points to qualify for the world team on a second event after winning the men’s synchronized 3-meter event earlier in the week at nationals. Quinn Henninger finished third at 792.35. Henninger was in second heading into finals, but Downs overtook him with 68.20 points on a front 3 ½ pike in round two and maintained the second spot for the rest of the contest. The divers were 12 points apart heading into round five, when Downs put down a reverse 3 ½ tuck that earned 84 points.
In the women’s 10-meter contest, Schnell scored 689.05 points on her two lists of dives to win her second national title this week and fifth overall. She scored more than 70 points on three of her five dives in the final.
Agunbiade finished with 613.95 points, while Jordan Skilken took third at 602.70. Agunbiade and Skilken were nearly tied with three rounds to go. Skilken had a narrow .05-point lead for the second position, but Agunbiade took the lead with 62.70 points on her third dive, a back 3 ½ tuck. Ultimately though, it came down to the final round. Skilken closed out her list with 75.20 points on her back 2 ½ with 1 ½ twists, which ended up being the highest scoring dive by any diver in the contest, but Agunbiade followed up with 68.80 points on her inward 3 ½ tuck to secure the silver medal and spot on the world team.
The USA Diving National Championships wrap up Wednesday with women’s 3-meter and men’s 10-meter finals.