Garcia Wins Again On Day 2 Of 2016 Zone A Championships

Penn State’s Hector Garcia won his second title in as many events and Penn State added a third NCAA diving qualifier on the second day of the Zone A Diving Championships.

Full results

Garcia won the 1-meter title to go with his 3-meter win from a day earlier, and Penn State also added Logan Knauss to the NCAA roster after a 4th-place finish.

On the men’s side, Pitt also added Dominic Giordano, who took second on 1-meter for an NCAA berth.

Rutgers’ Addison Walkowiak won on the women’s side, taking the 3-meter title and the top NCAA qualifying spot in the zone.* She was already qualified after finishing 2nd on yesterday’s 1-meter springboard.

*Read up on the full NCAA selection procedures below.

After qualifying three male divers yesterday, Virginia Tech earned its first female diving berth, courtesy of Ashlynn Peters, the 3-meter runner-up.

The full list of qualifiers is below. Zone A gets 5 women and 4 men into the meet with NCAA reimbursement status, and the rest of the names on the list are eligible to attend on their school’s dime.

Priority Finisher Women Men
1 3-meter Champ Addison Walkowiak, RUT Hector Garcia, PSU
2 1-meter Champ Olivia Lehman, JMU Hector Garcia, PSU
3 Platform Champ
4 3-meter 2nd Ashlynn Peters, VT John Crow, PSU
5 1-meter 2nd Addison Walkowiak, RUT Dominic Giordano, PITT
6 Platform 2nd
7 3-meter 3rd Meme Sharp, PITT Mauro Silva, VT
8 1-meter 3rd Alyssa Black, RUT Benjamin Schiesl, VT
9 Platform 3rd
10 3-meter 4th Rebecca Corbett, UVA Eduardo Castro, VT
11 1-meter 4th Meme Sharp, PITT Logan Knauss, PSU
12 Platform 4th
13 3-meter 5th Alyssa Black, RUT Benjamin Schiesl, VT
14 1-meter 5th Rebecca Corbett, UVA
15 Platform 5th
16 3-meter 6th Alexandra Butera, UCONN
17 1-meter 6th
18 Platform 6th

(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

1M 3M PLATFORM
Zone A 5 6 6
Zone B 9 8 7
Zone C 12 7 10
Zone D 6 9 9
Zone E 9 11 9

 

Men

1M 3M PLATFORM
Zone A 4 5 4
Zone B 10 10 8
Zone C 7 9 8
Zone D 7 7 8
Zone E 8 5 8

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:

WOMEN MEN
Zone A 5 4
Zone B 8 9
Zone C 11 8
Zone D 7 8
Zone E 10 6

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.

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About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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