USC Men Add Third NCAA Diver On Final Night of Zone E Champs

The USC Trojan men added one more diver to their NCAA roster on the final night of the 2016 Zone E Championships.

Full results

USC, one of the breakout teams of the second semester, will now have three divers into the national championships. Collin Pollard was already qualified and added a 4th-place finish on platform at Zones. Dashiell Enos was already in through 1-meter, but doubled up on qualifying with a 6th-place platform finish. And Deon Reid took 3rd on platform to book his own ticket to NCAAs on a reimbursement slot.

Arizona’s Rafael Quintero and Nevada’s Krysta Palmer won the platform events, each earning their second win of the meet. The duo also took the 1-meter titles and were both 3rd on 3-meter.

It was also a big platform event for Arizona State, with Mara Aiacoboae and Heikki Makikallio both taking second. Aiacoboae was already into NCAAs, but Makikallio booked his ticket with that platform finish.

In terms of the women’s NCAA team battle, Stanford is set up well with 3 qualified divers. But defending champs Cal also qualified two divers on the women’s side.

The final qualifying lists are below. 10 women and 6 men will earn NCAA reimbursement, and the rest of the names are eligible to compete at NCAAs on their school’s dime.*

*The full NCAA selection procedures are spelled out at the bottom of this story.

(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

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:

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.