2022 NCAA Women’s Championships: Minnesota’s Sarah Bacon Repeats as 3-Meter Champion
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Minnesota senior Sarah Bacon repeated as NCAA Champion on the 3-meter board on Friday, the final individual event on Day 4 of the 2022 NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships.
Bacon was the lone diver to surpass 400 points, winning the event with 409.25 points.
Bacon won the Honda Award as the top senior athlete in the NCAA last year but chose to come back for the extra year of eligibility that the NCAA offered for athletes whose seasons and/or postseasons were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My original plan was to do college season last year, then hopefully make the Olympic team and kind of be done with diving and kind of get on with my life. I ended up not making the Olympic team and I made the decision to stick around and train until 2024, and me and my coach decided with an extra year of eligibility that I would stick around for one more college season,” Bacon said.
Bacon was edged out on the 1-meter board on Thursday and returned to the top of the podium on Friday, which gave her a little extra motivation heading into the 3-meter competition.
“One-meter didn’t go how I wanted, so I had a little bit of a flame underneath me which really helped me today,” Bacon said.
Indiana took the next two spots with senior Kristen Hayden taking second with 397.20 points and sophomore Tarrin Gilliland finishing third with 382.00.
Arizona junior Delaney Schnell tied for fourth with Miami’s Mia Vallee, who won the 1-meter board on Thursday, both finishing with 376.20 points.
Texas had two of the final three finalist spots with Paola Pineda finishing sixth with 359.50 and freshman Hailey Hernandez taking eighth (339.70), one spot ahead of Stanford senior Carolina Sculti (344.00).
Event 13 Women 3 mtr Diving ========================================================================= Meet: M 437.75 3/20/2009 Christina Loukas, Indiana Pool: P 429.05 2/23/2011 Abby Johnson, Duke Name Year School Prelims Finals Points ========================================================================= === Championship Final === 1 Bacon, Sarah SR Minnesota 386.25 409.25 20 2 Hayden, Kristen SR Indiana 381.45 397.20 17 3 Gilliland, Tarrin SO Indiana 351.50 382.00 16 4 Schnell, Delaney JR Arizona 348.40 376.20 14.5 4 Vallee, Mia JR Miami (Florida) 356.55 376.20 14.5 6 Pineda, Paola SR Texas 357.40 359.50 13 7 Sculti, Carolina SR Stanford 348.30 344.00 12 8 Hernandez, Hailey FR Texas 366.35 339.70 11 === Consolation Final === 9 Vasquez Montano, Aran SO UNC 330.20 355.80 9 10 Skilken, Jordan JR Texas 332.55 348.20 7 11 Knapton, Abigail SR Rutgers 331.20 340.75 6 12 Amer, Maha JR Florida 325.60 339.75 5 13 Knight, Kyndal SR Kentucky 331.20 339.70 4 14 Straub, Kelly SR Notre Dame 316.85 324.25 3 15 Mirafuentes, Melissa JR Wyoming 318.05 317.70 2 16 O'Meara, Margo FR Duke 324.75 301.10 1