Between conference championships and national championships, there is a 3rd rung of NCAA swimming & diving championship season: the zone diving qualifying events.
Unlike swimmers, where hitting a certain qualifying standard or a national rank earns an athlete a spot at the NCAA National Championship meet, divers have just one opportunity to qualify for the big meet: via one of 6 Zone Diving meets. That’s because diving scoring isn’t objective like swimming scoring, and so the closer they can come to standardizing the scoring, in this case by creating relatively-uniform judging by high-level judges.
To qualify for the zone meets, divers must hit the Diving Standards listed below.
Who qualifies from those zone meets forward to the NCAA Championships gets a little complicated. Basically, each zone is allocated a certain number of spots in each event, based on how well the zone performed at the prior year’s NCAA Championship meet. In short, each zone starts with a baseline of 5 women and 4 men in each discipline, and then are allocated an additional spot for each top 16 finisher they had at NCAAs the prior year. No Zone A men, for example, scored on platform at NCAAs last year, so they still only get 4 spots for that event. Zone C, which includes the powerhouse programs at Indiana and Purdue, had 7 men score at NCAAs last year on the 1-meter, so they get 11 spots (4+7) for this year.
Once a diver is qualified, he or she can dive in any of the other 2 events, so long as they finished in the top 12 in their zone in that event. A certain number of divers from each zone have their costs reimbursed, while other schools will have to pay their athletes’ way – part of new rules instituted in the last few years to expand the diving field at NCAAs.
2019 NCAA Championship Zone Diving Meets
- Zone A – Lejeune Hall, Annapolis, Maryland – March 11th-13th
- Zone B – James E. Martin Aquatic Center, Auburn, Alabama – March 11th-13th
- Zone C – Morgan J. Burke Aquatic Center, West Lafayette, Indiana – March 14th-16th
- Zone D – Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, Austin, Texas – March 11th-13th
- Zone E – Douglas J. Wall Aquatic Center, Flagstaff, Arizona – March 11th-13th
Qualifying Spots Per Zone
| Women’s | 1m | 3m | platform | Men’s | 1m | 3m | platform |
| Zone A | 6 | 5 | 5 | Zone A | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Zone B | 9 | 8 | 6 | Zone B | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| Zone C | 9 | 8 | 12 | Zone C | 11 | 8 | 8 |
| Zone D | 9 | 12 | 9 | Zone D | 9 | 11 | 9 |
| Zone E | 8 | 8 | 9 | Zone E | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Zone Map
Editor’s note: this is the 2018 Zone Diving map. The 2019 map hasn’t been publicly released by the NCAA yet. If it changes, we will update this article at that time accordingly.
Click to Enlarge
The 2019 reimbursement schedule has also not yet been released.
In zone E for example is the PAC-12, which just had their championships last week. Are there any other div 1 associations in zone E? Why have the divers repeat what they contested last week. I know the answer, because that’s the rules . It seems that just having these zone championship instead of Conference meets, and awarding each conference awards from the the zone results would make a lot more sense.
The zones are split by state, not by conference. There are tons of other schools in Zone E. Dozens, or more. The Mountain West, for example, is a whole other conference in Zone E. In fact, all 3 women’s diving events at last year’s Zone E Championships were won by non-Pac 12 schools.
The goal of Zone diving meets is to ensure more consistent judging across conferences and regions. That’s why conference results aren’t used.
Here are last year’s Zone E results, if you want to peruse all of the schools that sent divers. There are more that potentially could send divers but didn’t have them qualify than our on here, but this should give you a sense of the… Read more »
Maybe a silly question… Stanford qualified 18 swimmers, and I understand that each Team can only bring 18 members (divers and swimmers). Can Stanford declare which swimmers they will bring After the diving in Zone E is completed, and they knows how many divers have qualified for the NCAA or does Stanford need to select both divers and swimmers who comprise their 18 member team before the diving competition in zone E? I realize that divers only count as .5 in the team numbers. Thanks
They can make that decision after zones.
Do you have a daily schedule as of yet for the Zone C ??
Tom – I’m sure it’s been created, but none has been posted yet. Will see if I can chase it down.
Joian the discussion…
any updates?…