Hawkeye divers continue solid stretch
Iowa diving had more members qualify for the NCAA Championships.
Iowa diver Will Brenner flips in the air during the Northwestern/Wisconsin swim meet at the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center on Saturday, January 19, 2019. The men’s swimming and diving team defeated the Badgers, 164-136, and the Wildcats, 194-106. The women’s swimming and diving team fell to the Badgers, 191-109, and the Wildcats, 178-122.
March 13, 2019
On Day 2 of the NCAA Zone D Diving Championships, the only Hawkeye who qualified for the NCAA finals was sophomore Jayah Mathews off the 1-meter springboard.
All the Iowa women divers saw improvement on Day 2, but none like Mathews. She finished eighth-place overall on the 1-meter with an overall score of 577.75. This score was good enough to qualify the sophomore in a second event as she qualified for the 3-meter on Day 1. She posted a better preliminary score of 290.75, just edging out her finals score of 287.10.
Besides Mathews, junior Thelma Strandberg and freshman Sam Tamborski also made it to the finals off the 1-meter. Out of the 51 divers competing, Strandberg (265.45) and Tamborski (256.75) finished back-to-back in the preliminaries barely making the finals at the 17th and 18th spot.
Tamborski would not move from the 18 spot as she finished 18th overall with a score of 519.25. Strandberg, on the other hand, swam up the rankings as she finished 13th overall with a score of 552.35.
The rest of the Iowa women’s divers may have not finished amongst the top 20 but saw improvement in their placings and scores on Day 2 off the 1-meter. In the preliminaries, sophomore Claire Park (229.90, 33rd), senior Jacintha Thomas (224.85, 37th), and freshman Jolynn Harris (224.45, 38th) all seemed to gain some confidence.
On the men’s side, two divers made it to the top 20 off the 3-meter springboard. Sophomore Anton Hoherz (315) and senior Will Brenner (334.20) finished in 20th and 13th spots in preliminaries, respectively, which made Hoherz just shy of the top 18 by four points, unable to qualify for Day 2 finals. Brenner did compete in the finals but was not as hot as he was in the morning. Brenner finished the 3-meter at 15th overall with 309.30 points in the finals.
Seeing his first action at the 2019 NCAA Zone D Diving Championship, sophomore Jonatan Posligua closed the boards for Iowa. Day 2 did not see his best performance, but he finished the preliminaries with 267.15 points, finished 26th out of the 31 there.
Day 3 will be the final day of action for the NCAA Zone D Diving Championship with both the men and women’s team diving off the platform. There will only be 18 competitors for the men tomorrow and Poligua and Hoherz will be two of them. For the women, there will be 26 competitors and two of them will be Harris and Strandberg.