Courtesy: USA Diving
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee – Tyler Downs won men’s 3-meter and Delaney Schnell took the women’s 10-meter gold Tuesday at the USA Diving Winter National Championships.
Grayson Campbell and Daryn Wright took silver on those events, with the top two on each event qualifying to represent the United States at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar in February.
Scores were cumulative over two lists of dives, and Downs came through with 805.65 points to edge Campbell by 1.40 points for the 3-meter gold. Quinn Henninger scored 763.25 points for bronze.
Downs had scored 412.15 points in Sunday’s semifinal and headed into the final with a 16.3-point lead over third place.
Downs missed his fifth-round reverse 3 ½ tuck for 47.25 points in the final to open the door with one round to go. He came through with 71.40 points on his last dive, a front 2 ½ with two twists, enough to narrowly secure the gold medal.
But, due to a technical glitch with the scoring, Downs didn’t know where he had finished.
“It was weird because they didn’t have the cumulative scores on the scoreboard, so I was stressing at the end of the last two rounds, but I made sure to stay calm and not really worry about the math of it, just do my dives like I know how to,” Downs said. “One of my friends told me I won by one point.”
Campbell stepped away from diving after the 2020 Olympic Trials and spent time working at a tech company before deciding in August of this year that he wanted to return to the sport. Campbell was third after the semifinals, and a consistent effort in the final moved him up to the silver medal spot. He was the only diver to score 60 or more points on all six dives in the final.
Schnell captured her third straight U.S. national title on 10-meter with 654.60 points over two lists of dives. Wright scored 586.05 points for silver, and Katrina Young picked up the bronze with 552.95 points.
Schnell led after Sunday’s semifinals and maintained the top spot throughout the final and closed out her competition with 76.80 points on an inward 3 ½ tuck in the last round.
“It was solid. I don’t think I really hit anything up until the inward. I was just trying to be steady and focus on the corrections that Dwight and I have been working on, focusing on the starts and on the entries, and then the dive will work itself out,” Schnell said.
The 2023 USA Diving Winter National Championships wrap up Wednesday with women’s 3-meter and men’s 10-meter finals.
