Michigan Adds 3 Last-Minute NCAA Divers On Night 3 of Zone C Champs

The Michigan women got in under the wire, qualifying 3 NCAA divers with the last three slots in the very last diving event of the 2016 Zones season.

Full results

With the top 10 finishers on the women’s platform at the Zone C Championships making NCAAs, Michigan went 8-9-10 with Alessandra Murphy, Sarah Kamstra and Elena Gormley.

Though all three will need big NCAA meets to earn points, that could be a big opportunity for the Wolverines, who were ranked 11th in psych sheet scoring but were the only team in the top 13 with no divers qualified heading into tonight.

Ohio State’s Zhipeng Zeng wrapped up  clean sweep on the men’s side, winning platform after taking 1-meter and 3-meter titles. He leads 4 Ohio State Buckeye men in the NCAA meet. One Buckeye woman is in as well.

Northwestern’s Olivia Rosendahl earned the women’s platform win, denying a meet sweep to Pei Lin of Miami of Ohio. Lin had won both springboards on consecutive days.

Purdue tripled its diving threats on the women’s side, adding Lexi Vincent and Sydney Couch on platform. The Purdue men also have two divers in.

The full qualifying list is below. 11 women and 8 men will earn NCAA reimbursement, while the rest of the qualifiers are eligible to compete at NCAAs on their school’s dime.

(Athletes in bold are locked in for NCAA reimbursement. Athletes who have doubled up on qualifying spots are noted with a line through their lower priority slot.)

NCAA ZONE QUALIFYING PROCEDURES

From our refresher post, which you can find here.

Divers qualify for the NCAA Championships through Zone Meets spread across the country. Each zone earns a set number of NCAA qualifying spots based on the performances of that Zone at NCAAs in the past.

Here are the qualifying spots for each event in each zone:

Women

Men

Any diver who finishes within the qualifying spots for their zone earns eligibility for the NCAA Championships. Any diver who earns eligibility in one event can compete in any of the other two events at NCAAs, provided they finished inside the top 12 in their zone in that event.

The final wrinkle is a new rule from last season that makes a distinction between “eligible” athletes and “reimbursed” athletes. The NCAA loosened its rules last season to allow more divers into the meet, but divers qualifying under the new rules do not recieve reimbursement from the NCAA for their travel, lodging and meet expenses – that means it’s up to the individual school to decide if they will foot the bill themselves to allow the diver to compete at NCAAs.

Each zone has a set number of reimbursement spots between the three events combined:

The spots are determined by a priority chart. The winners of each event have first priority, starting with the 3-meter champ, then the 1-meter champ, then the platform champ. After that, the runners-up are added in the same order. If an athlete wins both 1-meter and 3-meter, they still only take one reimbursement slot, meaning the NCAA will keep adding rows of this chart until the reimbursement quota for that zone is met.