March 5, 2007
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - It's official. Purdue diving will be sending four represenatitives to the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships: Danny Cox, Amanda Miller, Zach Schultz and Emily Wetzel.
Miller is a three-time NCAA competitior. Cox, Schultz and Wetzel are all first-time national championship qualifiers.
Cox and Miller sewed up their spots for NCAAs off the springboards on Friday and Saturday, while Wetzel and Schultz waited for their turn off the platform tower.
The sophomores did not disappoint as they turned in a pair of bronze-medal showings.
Wetzel, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, scored 512.50 points, coming in behind Indiana's Lindsay Weigle (622.20) and Heather Chapman (575.85). Schultz, with 658.45 points, placed behind Shaun Kennedy of Minnesota (675.05) and Cox, who scored a runner-up total of 665.60 points.
Purdue rookie Kyle Mitrione was the third Boilermaker to place among the top five with his fifth-place total of 623.70. Freshman J.P. Perez also had an impressive outing with an 11th-place score of 463.30.
Purdue's female divers had an equally strong day as their male counterparts. Finishing behind Wetzel were Katie Berg in fifth (493.35), Chelsea Johnson in ninth (444.50) and Miller in 13th (418.80).
Of the nine women Zone C was able to send to the NCAA Championships, eight of them hailed from the Big Ten Conference. Joining Miller and Wetzel in Minneapolis will be Weigle, Chapman, Christina Loukas and Brittany Feldman of IU, Michigan's Elyse Lee, Ohio State's Julie Broms and Eastern Michigan's Sarah Chrzanowski.
For the first time in a long time not a single IU male diver will be competing at NCAA's. The seven allocations on Zone C's men's side were claimed by Cox and Schultz, Ohio State's Weston Wieser, Hugh Showe and Kellen Harkness, Kennedy of Minnesota, and Christopher Dalman of Cleveland State.
The women's NCAA Championships begin this weekend in Minneapolis, starting Thursday, March 8. The men's championships kick off the following Thursday, on March 15.