Courtesy: MIT Athletics
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – After winning their 11th and ninth straight New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championships, respectively, last weekend, the MIT men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams will have eight student-athletes competing in this weekend’s NCAA Division III Northeast-North Diving Regionals hosted by the Engineers inside the Zesiger Sport and Fitness Center Pool.
Seniors Jeremy Sands (Skokie, Ill.), junior Samuel Solomon (Rockville, Md.), sophomore Maxwell Halkenhauser (Denville, N.J.) and first-year Jay Lang (South Lyon, Mich.) will represent the men’s team, while seniors Morgan Matranga (Moraga, Calif.) and Dolly Payne (Los Alamitos, Calif.) as well as junior Blake Zhou (Palo Alto, Calif.) and sophomore Deborah Wen (Honolulu, Hawaii) will represent the women’s team. For Sands, Payne and Matranga it will be their fourth straight year competing at regionals. All eight divers will look to qualify for the upcoming NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving National Championships which will take place in Greensboro, North Carolina from March 20-23.
In order to qualify for the regional, divers must either achieve the NCAA standard on the same board at least twice during the regular season or once at the conference championship on either board, which all eight Engineers accomplished this year.
At the NEWMAC Championship, Wen and Lang swept the league’s major diving awards as they were named as the NEWMAC Divers of the Year. Lang broke the school record and finished second on the 1-meter board with his score of 534.40 and also claimed gold on the 3-meter board with his score of 567.95. Solomon finished third both boards, while Sands placed sixth on both boards on the men’s side. Wen took home gold medals on both boards finishing with a 1-meter score of 500.65 and a 3-meter score of 525.05, Zhou earned Second Team All-Conference honors in both disciplines with scores of 444.70 (1-meter) and 510.50 (3-meter), Payne claimed fourth place on the 1-meter board and fifth on the 3-meter board and Matranga finished third on the 3-meter board and fifth on the 1-meter board.
The NCAA Division III Northeast-North Diving Regional gets underway on Friday, March 1 at 2:00 p.m. and continues on Saturday, March 2 at 12:00 p.m. from MIT. For more information click here: 2019 Northeast-North Diving Regional Homepage.
