March 11, 2010

By Weston Ackerman
Athletic Media Relations
 
AUSTIN, Texas- Shayna Solomon, Colorado State’s lone representative at the Zone E regional diving meet, advanced to the final round of the 1-meter competition before finishing 18th with a score of 470.00 Thursday at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swim Center.

Solomon and her coach, Kevin Witt, were pleased with the day’s results.

“We’re pretty happy with the way it went today,” Witt said. “She made the final and that’s good. She was very consistent. And even though the scores weren’t as high as we would have liked, the scores overall were low.”

Out of the starting field of 41, the top 18 move on from the preliminary round. Solomon squeaked by with a score of 241.00, edging out the 19th-place finisher by 45 tenths of a point. Of the 18 women that made the final round, eight were from the Mountain West Conference.

The winner of the meet was Southern California’s Victoria Ishimatsu, who posted an overall score of 622.05. The highest-placing MWC diver was Tawni Jones of BYU. Jones posted a combined score of 597.85 to finish third. Witt said that the NCAA tournament will only take the top six divers or so from the Zone E region to compete in the national championship meet.

“This is a tough meet. There are a lot of girls competing and making the final (of the 1-meter dive) was one of my goals going in,” Witt said. “The 1-meter is her event. Today was tough and tomorrow will be even tougher.”

Solomon will scale the 3-meter diving board Friday as competition resumes in the regional meet at 11 a.m. MT.