The IU men’s and women’s dive teams will be at home this weekend at the NCAA Zone C Diving Championships, and the familiar setting is sure to help head dive coach Drew Johansen prepare his team.
“It means everything to us,” Johansen said. “Our kids always dive great when we’re at home.”
The championships will take place at 1 p.m. Thursday in the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatics Center. Sophomore James Connor and juniors Cody Coldren and Michael Hixon will represent the men’s team, while junior Jessica Parratto and senior Michal Bower will be the women’s team’s contingent.
There are five zone meets across the country to qualify divers for the NCAA Championships, which will take place in Indianapolis in two weeks. Each zone gets a certain amount of qualifying spots for NCAAs based on the performances by that zone’s divers at the previous year’s NCAA meet. Zone C has NCAA spots for eight women and five men in the 1-meter, nine women and seven men in the 3-meter, and six women and seven men in the platform.
The IU men enter the NCAA qualifying event coming off an impressive showing at the Big Ten Championships at Ohio State in late February. Hixon was phenomenal in Columbus, as he won both the 1- and 3-meter springboard events and finishing sixth in the 10-meter platform. His performance was good enough to be named diver of the championships. He called Zone C likely the best diving zone in the country.
“It’s going to be very competitive,” Hixon said. “But, you know, if we go in there with a team effort I think we’re going to come out and all be headed to Indy in a couple weeks.”
Connor finished second in the 1-meter, fifth in the 3-meter and the ninth in the 10-meter at this year’s Big Tens, and Coldren rounded out the trio by finishing eighth in the 1-meter, 11th in the 3-meter and 12th in the 10-meter.
According to Johansen, both Connor and Coldren were not quite at full strength during Big Tens after being run-down from the long season. A spike in both divers’ results could be on deck this weekend after a much-needed two weeks of rest time.
“For us it doesn’t matter anymore, you know, what the rest of the season has been like,” Connor said. “It’s really whether or not you can show up and dive well over the next three days.”
Parratto and Bower have led the Hoosiers’ female divers all year. At Big Tens, Parratto spearheaded the duo by winning the platform and finishing fifth in the 1- and 3-meter springboards. Bower finished seventh in the 1-meter but hurt herself in the event and did not compete in the 3-meter or platform events. Like Coldren and Connor, it will be worth watching whether the Arizona transfer is fully healthy and ready to go this weekend.
The meet will begin with the women’s 1-meter and men’s 3-meter springboard events on Thursday, and Johansen said that will set the tone for Parratto and Bower.
“We can have a great day on Thursday,” Johansen said. “It’ll carry over to the other events for us. So both those girls — we’re looking for hopefully a great day tomorrow to start things off.”
This week presents a distinct task for the Hoosiers in terms of consistency as well. At each NCAA Zone qualifying event, cumulative scoring is used. This means that all of the divers’ scores count toward their final total, as opposed to Big Tens or the NCAA Championships where scores reset to zero after the preliminary round entering the finals.
Hixon said avoiding big misses will be key to success during the weekend, and he is confident that IU will do well if it can match its level from two weeks ago.
“Hopefully we have a very similar performance to what we had at Big Tens because we had a great team effort at Big Tens, and if we replicate that this weekend I think we’re going to be pretty happy with it,” Hixon said.
