2016 Olympians Jessica Parratto (Dover, N.H./Bloomington, Ind.) and Michael Hixon (Amherst, Mass./Bloomington, Ind.) lead the women’s 10-meter and men’s 3-meter fields after preliminary and semifinal competition Friday at USA Diving’s World Championships Trials.
The finals are set for Sunday, with two spots on each event at stake for this summer’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Scores are cumulative, with preliminaries, semifinals and finals all counting in team selection.
Parratto leads the women’s 10-meter standings with 672.90 points after two lists of dives. Tarrin Gilliland (Liberty Hill, Texas/Midland, Texas) is in second place with 643.15 points, and Delaney Schnell (Tucson, Ariz.) is third at 634.60.
Hixon scored 841.90 points to top the men’s 3-meter field after two lists of dives. 2016 Olympian Steele Johnson (Carmel, Ind./West Lafayette, Ind.) scored 833.70 points to sit in second heading into the finals, and Briadam Herrera (Miami, Fla.) is third with 808.10 points.
Parratto has been working on the difficult back 3 ½ pike, a dive with a degree of difficulty of 3.6 that very few women in the world are doing. She scored 66.60 points on the dive in both the preliminaries and the semifinals. Parratto previously used a back 3 ½ tuck, which has a DD of 3.3.
“It’s a really difficult dive, but I’ve been training it for a few months now and it’s slowly getting there. I’m pretty close to actually getting it down. I was a little over on both of them, but I was really happy with how it went considering it’s pretty hard,” Parratto said.
Parratto had previously competed the dive at the Big Ten Championships and NCAA Championships earlier this year but not in the preliminary or semifinal. With the world trials being cumulative, it was a risk to try to the difficult dive three times.
“We were planning on doing this dive in all three lists from the beginning of the year. It was a big challenge to see if I could do it in all three lists, especially in a 10 a.m. prelim when you’re not as loose. Hopefully in the final I can do an even better job,” said Parratto.
Hixon scored more than 70 points on six of his 12 dives, including 86.70 points on an inward 3 ½ tuck in the preliminaries. Johnson closed out his semifinal list with 84.60 points on a front 4 ½ tuck for his best-scoring dive of the day after scoring more than 70 points on five other dives throughout the preliminaries and semifinals.
The World Championship Trials continue Saturday with preliminaries and semifinals in women’s 3-meter and men’s 10-meter. Preliminary competition begins at 10 a.m., with semifinals set for 5 p.m.
Standings after women’s 10-meter semifinals
1. Jessica Parratto (TriSynerG Diving Academy), 672.90
2. Tarrin Gilliland (City of Midland), 643.15
3. Delaney Schnell (Unattached), 634.60
4. Olivia Rosendahl (Unattached), 550.45
5. Amy Magana (The Indiana International School of Diving), 519.20
6. Daria Lenz (Unattached), 455.80
7. Johanna Holloway (Moss Farms Diving), 439.85
8. Alessandra Murphy (Club Wolverine Diving), 397.10
9. Alexis Vincent (Purdue University), 378.90
Standings after men’s 3-meter semifinals
1. Michael Hixon (TriSynerG Diving Academy), 841.90
2. Steele Johnson (Purdue University), 833.70
3. Briadam Herrera (University of Miami), 808.10
4. Samuel Dorman (University of Miami), 742.80
5. Grayson Campbell (Longhorn Aquatics), 728.40
6. Joseph Cifelli (Purdue University), 706.65
7. Andrew Capobianco (Duke Diving), 703.40
8. Mark Anderson (Longhorn Aquatics), 700.15
9. Cody Coldren (TriSynerG Diving Academy), 627.05
10. Gregory Duncan (Dominion Dive Club), 624.35
11. Travis Wright (Unattached), 516.30
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