By Glenn Billman, news staff
Junior diver Alyssa Seales ended her season with 41st and 46th place out of 61 during two competitions in the preliminary round of the NCAA Zone A Diving Championships. She notched 205.65 and 208.10 points in the 1 and 3-meter dives, respectively.
Although Seales said the competition was tougher than her first Zone Championship last year, she believes this season was her strongest yet.
“I feel like I went in there really strong. I definitely did the best that I could,” Seales said. “I was a little disappointed with a few of my dives, just because they set my placing pretty far down afterwards. But I definitely think I did better than last year, so I’m really happy that I went and I’m happy I got to experience it again.”
Only one diver from the Colonial Athletic Association, James Madison University’s Olivia Lehman, placed in the top 18 and advanced to finals.
“[Seales] was surrounded by a lot of very talented divers, and she really held her own,” diving coach Lauren Colby said. “She was very confident, and she did well. I think she definitely got motivation for next year. She wants to do even better next year.”
Seales was the Huskies’ third highest scorer throughout the regular season, bringing home 189 points. Colby attributes Seales’ success this year to her increased dedication.
“She knew that diving is a sport where it’s a lot of repetition—you just have to keep doing the dives over and over again to perfect them—so she just really got more dives in at practice and worked the ones that she needed to,” Colby said. “Her freshman and sophomore year I think she was just a little bit more laid back with her training. She was still fearful of some of her dives that she would not like to do at every practice.”
Seales concentrated her training this season on mastering dives with a higher degree of difficulty, which earn more points in competition.
“I always made sure that I was asking more: If I could try this dive, do this dive, pushing myself,” Seales said. “And you know, everyone has that one tough category that they always somehow manage to avoid, and for me that’s reversed, and I’ve kind of took them and tried to do them every day or if not every day as much as I possibly could, just so I could get better at them. And I think that I wouldn’t change anything that I did this year, because I was definitely a better athlete and teammate than I’ve ever been, and I’m happy about that.”
Seales plans to continue to work on difficult dives as she finishes her collegiate career next year, and she said she hopes to return to Zones more prepared.
“It’s something that I’ve always wanted to be better at, just kind of going out for the hard dives,” Seales said. “That’s what makes you stand out as a competitor. That’s what makes it possible to compete at big competitions like Zones.”
