Squad ends season with top finishes

  COURTNEY STEWART UCLA competed in the Zone E Meet this
past weekend.

By Calley Prezzano
Daily Bruin Contributor

Despite 11 top-15 finishes by the UCLA dive team at the Zone E
Meet this past Friday and Saturday, only senior Anne Baghramian
qualified and will continue to the NCAA Championships this
Thursday.

UCLA’s top finishers were consistent, but did not rank
high enough in each event to make NCAAs. The event that Baghramian
excelled was the three-meter, scoring fourth with 473.35 points.
Other top-20 finishes included sophomore Heidi Prosser at seventh
(450.2), sophomore Regan Gosnell at 14th (420.95) and freshman
Michelle Brown at 20th (229.45).

“Obviously, I’m disappointed that I didn’t
dive better, but now I can learn, and go forward,” Prosser
said.

On the platform, besides Baghramian (eighth place, 361.9
points), Gosnell (ninth, 353.1), Brown (11th, 329.7), and sophomore
Jen McNally (13th, 328.05) scored high for the Bruins.

On the 1-meter, Prosser was sixth with a 257.10, followed by
Gosnell (eighth, 252.4) and Baghramian (ninth, 248.9), with
McNally, Brown, freshman Kasey Reinhard and junior Chrissie
Amorosia among the top 26 finishers.

The problem was not that the team was having a substandard meet,
but that each diver needs to peak and give her top performance to
score high.

“We weren’t having an off meet,” Baghramian
said. “You just need to hit every single dive to make
it.”

Stanford’s Erin Sones and McKenze Murphy placed first and
second on the platform, second and third on the 1-meter, and third
and fifth on the 3-meter, respectively. Other meet leaders were
USC’s Kelli Brennan who claimed first on the 1-meter (286.2),
and teammate Nicci Fusaro, who won the 3m (519.95).

The Bruin divers had been focused on doing well at the NCAA Zone
E Meet all season. This was the qualifying meet for upcoming NCAAs,
and only eight out of 38 divers from the region will move on.

Competing from Western Region outside Pac-10s will be Anna
Tutunnikova from BYU, who just edged out Prosser (ninth place
overall). Baghramian, as the only qualifier from UCLA, will join
Sones, Tutunnikova, Murphy, Brennan, Fusaro, Arizona’s
Lindsay Berryman and Adrian David this Thursday at the Nassau
Aquatic Center in Long Island, NY.

For the rest of the diving team, the intercollegiate season is
over.

“We need to evaluate exactly what happened, take the
positive things and move from there,” Prosser said.

However, they cannot deny that they had a great season after
helping to win Pac-10s for the first time in the school’s
swim team history. UCLA also had one of the largest teams competing
at the Zone E Meet.

“This has been the most awesome team that I’ve ever
been a part of,” Baghramian said. “Plus, having
everyone there (at the Zone E Meet) helped to relieve the high
pressure of the meet.”

Today, Baghramian will join the swim team on its flight to New
York and will start practicing again after they arrive in Long
Island. Although she will be the only diver contending for the
Bruins, Baghramian does not think about the meet as an independent
challenge.

“I am competing on my own, but we are one team,” she
said. “My goal is to score points for the team.”

Baghramian will be adapting to the setting, and familiarizing
with the boards in order to prepare for this weekend. Besides
physical concentrations, she will also focus on a positive
mentality, and the psychological applications for the meet.

“(NCAAs) is a completely different caliber of diving.
There will be Olympians competing, and regions like the Midwest are
very strong,” Baghramian said. “I’m getting ready
to compete at that level.”