Texas Men Qualify Two Divers At Zone D’s Day 1

2017 NCAA Zone Diving

• Zones A, B, D & E: Monday, March 6 – Wednesday, March 8
• Zone C: Thursday, March 9 – Saturday, March 11
• Host schools:
  • Zone A: Virginia Tech
  • Zone B: Auburn
  • Zone C: Indiana
  • Zone D: Missouri
  • Zone E: Northern Arizona
• NCAA selection primer

The defending NCAA champion Texas Longhorns will have at least two divers competing in Indianapolis later this month, including All-American Mark Anderson.

Zone D results

Anderson and Grayson Campbell are both locked into NCAA berths, though neither has yet earned NCAA reimbursement status. With Zone D’s relative wealth of reimbursement slots, though, it seems likely one or both will earn that distinction later this week.

On the men’s side, LSU’s Juan Hernandez won the 1-meter event, followed by Texas A&M’s duo of Tyler Henschel and Sam Thornton. Those three are all locked into NCAA reimbursement slots (the equivalent of the old qualifying method changed in 2015).

For the women, Minnesota dominated competition, qualifying three divers including 3-meter winner Yu Zhou. The 2016 NCAA runner-up on platform, Zhou will be into NCAAs in a reimbursement slot along with eligible (but not yet reimbursed) divers Sarah Bacon and Lexi Tenenbaum.

The Texas women also qualified one diver, Allison Gibson. 

The full qualifying list is below. We’ll continue updating this chart as more events happen this week.

(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

MEN

According to the rules set in 2015 that allowed more divers into the meet, any diver who lands in the qualifying spots for their zone earns a spot to compete in the NCAA Championships. If the diver earns eligibility in one event, they can automatically compete in any of the other two events at NCAAs as long as they finished in the top 12 in their zone in that event.

The NCAA made a distinction between “eligible” and “reimbursed” athletes. Divers qualifying outside of the reimbursement spots will not have their travel, lodging, or meet expenses covered by the NCAA.  Instead the individual school must decide if they’re willing to pay the bill themselves to give that diver an opportunity to participate in the NCAA Championships.

A priority chart determines who gets the reimbursement spots. The first priority spot is taken by the winner of each event beginning with the 3-meter champ, followed by the 1-meter champ and then the platform champ. If an athlete wins two events, they will still only take up one slot which means the NCAA will keep adding rows to this chart until the zone meet reimbursement quota is met.