PHOENIX – Next week, the NCAA Zone Diving Qualifying events begin to take place at the NCAA Division I level. This is the last step for divers to make the NCAA Division I Championships later this month. And, luckily for everyone involved, qualifying just got a lot simpler.
The new system is really similar to swimming qualifying with a de facto A cut, B cut and school-paid-for invitations versus what the NCAA reimburses an institution for in terms of a diver competing at the event. This was only possible with swimming breaking through with the NCAA recently to institute the relay-alternate system where schools can pay for swimmers to attend above the NCAA-reimbursed student-athlete cap for the meet.
The new system is as follows:
“The top five female and top four male divers from each event at their respective zone diving meet will be eligible to compete at the NCAA championships. Additional place finishers in each event at each zone will be eligible based on the number of student-athletes from that zone who finished in the top 16 in that event at the previous year’s championships NCAA championships. All eligible divers must have achieved the zone qualifying score prior to the NCAA championships in all events they wish to participate.”
Numbers of Qualifying Spots Per Zone for 2014-15 (A CUT)
(Consider these placements A cuts as swimmers. If a diver finishes within the the top number of qualifying spots allocated for an event within a zone, that diver is then invited to NCAAs for THAT EVENT ONLY)
Women
[table “” not found /]Men
[table “” not found /]The varying numbers per zone, as explained above, are based on the success of the zone the prior year. For example, Zone A has 7 qualifying spots in each event for the women. That means that they had the based five qualifiers, and also has two divers make the top 16 in each event last year, so they are able to qualify the top seven in each event.
The next step is called the Optional Entry at the NCAA Championships.
Optional Entry at the NCAA Championships (B CUT)
“Any diver that is eligible to compete as noted above will be allowed to optionally enter any other event(s) at the championships, provided that the diver finished in the top 12 at the same zone meet and has achieved the zone qualifying score for that event prior to the NCAA championships.”
(Consider this step the B cut for divers. Once a diver has been invited in an event, they will be required to finish in the top 12 of the other two events to be able to dive in them at NCAAs)
For those that might not understand the set-up, divers must qualify through a separate meet instead of just meeting a set standard like swimmers. Since diving is subjectively scored, these zone meets drastically reduce the impact that any given set of diving coaches scoring diving at dual meets can have on the NCAA meet by forcing zone-cut divers to compete against each other regionally.
Zone Diving Schedule
Zone A
Location: Buffalo, New York
Dates: March 9-11
Host: University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Zone B
Location: Athens, Georgia
Dates: March 9-11
Host: University of Georgia
Zone C
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Dates: March 12-14
Host: The Ohio State University
Zone D
Location: Iowa City, Iowa
Dates: March 9-11
Host: University of Iowa
Zone E
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Dates: March 9-11
Host: U.S. Air Force Academy
Special thanks to Georgia head diving coach Dan Laak for explaining the new system.
This is much more like what we used to have in place when I competed. Back then we had a set number that qualified, and some automatic qualifiers from conference meets if you had divers from your conference place in the top 16 the year before. Much better than what had been going on the past few years.