Stanford Women Qualify 2 Divers, Cal Women 1 At Zone E Day 1

2017 NCAA Zone Diving

• Zones A, B, D & E: Monday, March 6 – Wednesday, March 8
• Zone C: Thursday, March 9 – Saturday, March 11
• Host schools:
  • Zone A: Virginia Tech
  • Zone B: Auburn
  • Zone C: Indiana
  • Zone D: Missouri
  • Zone E: Northern Arizona
• NCAA selection primer

Stanford continues to add to its arsenal heading into the women’s NCAA Championships. Kassidy Cook earned a reimbursement slot and Haley Farnsworth also earned NCAA eligiblity on 3-meter to open the Zone E meet.

Zone E results

Stanford, the favorites to win this year’s national title, continue to stack up their roster with NCAA qualifying slots. The Cardinal had already qualified 14 swimmers and now will have at least two divers. Each diver counts as half a roster spot, with teams capped at 18 roster spots.

Fellow Pac-12 program UCLA had the best day on the women’s side, with Maria Polyakova winning the 3-meter title and Annika Lenz and Ciara Monahan also earning NCAA bids. Cal, one of the top challengers to Stanford’s title run, did get Phoebe Lamay into the meet.

On the men’s side, potential top 10 programs Stanford, Cal and USC all got divers in. USC’s Henry Fusaro won the 1-meter event and booked a reimbursement slot. Stanford’s Bradley Christensen is the other diver locked into reimbursement status. The Trojans also qualified Dashiell Enos and Stanford got Theodore Miclau and Cameron Thatcher into NCAAs. Cal meanwhile qualified Connor Callahan.

The full qualifying list is below. We’ll continue updating this chart as more events happen this week.

(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

According to the rules set in 2015 that allowed more divers into the meet, any diver who lands in the qualifying spots for their zone earns a spot to compete in the NCAA Championships. If the diver earns eligibility in one event, they can automatically compete in any of the other two events at NCAAs as long as they finished in the top 12 in their zone in that event.

The NCAA made a distinction between “eligible” and “reimbursed” athletes. Divers qualifying outside of the reimbursement spots will not have their travel, lodging, or meet expenses covered by the NCAA.  Instead the individual school must decide if they’re willing to pay the bill themselves to give that diver an opportunity to participate in the NCAA Championships.

A priority chart determines who gets the reimbursement spots. The first priority spot is taken by the winner of each event beginning with the 3-meter champ, followed by the 1-meter champ and then the platform champ. If an athlete wins two events, they will still only take up one slot which means the NCAA will keep adding rows to this chart until the zone meet reimbursement quota is met.