Four UK Divers Book Trips to the 2019 NCAA Championships
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Taking full advantage of the final day of the Zone C Diving Championships, two University of Kentucky divers booked NCAA platform appointments on Saturday. The UK swimming and diving program will send four divers – two female and two male – to the 2019 NCAA Women’s and Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships.
Senior Courtney Clark collected a 255.20 mark in the initial platform round to finish fifth in the 24-person field, becoming one of 18 to advance to the final round. There, she foiled in one of her five dives to earn a mark of zero. Room to improve, Clark rallied for 218.30 points, making a final score of 473.50 to finish 12th.
Clark, who won a silver medal on platform at the 2019 Southeastern Conference Championships, earned a mark just good enough to fill an NCAA spot, as only 12 NCAA spots were available in the event.
Freshman Kyndal Knight gained her third NCAA ticket, this time on platform. She earned a spot in the top 18 after a preliminary score of 250.30, then collected nearly six points more in the final round for a ninth-place finish of 506.30. Knight will represent UK in all three disciplines at the NCAA Championships.
The men’s division followed, while two UK divers filled final-round spots. Silver medalist on platform at the league meet in February, sophomore Chase Lane posted six dives worth 322.85 points in the preliminary round, before he scratched midway through the final round. Lane incurred an injury on the springboard on Friday, that also caused him to scratch on the 3-meter springboard.
Senior Seb Masterton, a 2019 NCAA qualifier on both springboards, found a spot in the final round of platform, too. The England native reported a 317.60 in the first wave and a 326.3 in the final round to finish 10th overall and qualify for the national meet for the third time this weekend.
The UK divers who qualified for the NCAA Championships:
1-meter springboard
Kyndal Knight
Seb Masterton
3-meter springboard
Kyndal Knight
Seb Masterton
Danny Zhang
Platform
Courtney Clark
Kyndal Knight
Seb Masterton
Knight and Clark will join nine UK swimmers, making a team of 11 individual possible scorers in the national meet. Masterton and Zhang will join two UK men for five individual possible scorers. Both the women and the men will also compete in relay event(s).
The 2019 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships will meet March 20-23, while the NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships will commence the following week, March 27-30. Both meets will be hosted at the Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas.
For the latest on the Kentucky swimming and diving program, follow @UKSwimDive on Twitter and on Instagram, on Facebook and on the web at UKathletics.com.
