March 12, 2014
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – All five members of the University of Notre Dame men’s diving team will attempt to earn a berth into the NCAA Championship meet later this month at the NCAA Zone C Diving Championship, scheduled to take place Thursday through Saturday at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion in Columbus, Ohio.
Freshman Joe Coumos, junior Michael Kreft, freshman James Lichtenstein, junior Nick Nemetz and junior Ted Wagner are all entered in the 1 and 3-meter diving events, with Coumos, Nemetz and Wagner also scheduled to compete in the platform diving discipline. The meet is scheduled to begin with the 3-meter competition on Thursday, the 1-meter event on Friday and the platform portion on Saturday.
Coumos has enjoyed a standout freshman campaign thus far for the Irish, being named the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Diver of the Week on Nov. 19 and Dec. 10 earlier this season. Coumos posted the top Notre Dame 3-meter score (398.20 points) and platform score (290.60 points) in December at the Hawkeye Invitational. Coumos added the second-best 1-meter scoring total (363.60 points) in a dual meet against Purdue in November.
Kreft was the top Notre Dame finisher off the 1-meter board at the ACC Championship in February, posting a season-best sequence of 334.55 points. Kreft will compete at the NCAA Zone Championship for the third consecutive season after posting the top Irish results off both the 1 and 3-meter boards at last season’s meet. Kreft tallied 283.40 points in the 1-meter competition and added 329.35 points in the 3-meter event in 2013 to finish 20th in both diving disciplines.
Lichtenstein will join classmate Coumos in making his first Zone C start this weekend by taking part in both the 1 and 3-meter preliminary rounds. Lichtenstein logged a season-high score of 321.50 points in the 3-meter competition at the Hawkeye Invitational.
Nemetz will make his third straight start at the NCAA Zone meet, in which he led all Notre Dame entrants with a 12th place finish in the 1-meter and a 19th place result in the 3-meter dive as a freshman in 2012. Nemetz enters the weekend with the best Irish point total in the 1-meter event (364.60 points, Hawkeye Invitational), and is ranked third off the platform (281.50) and fourth off the 3-meter board (353.25) this season.
Wagner returns to the NCAA Zone Championship looking to build upon his career-best 26th place effort (274.50 points) in the 1-meter preliminary round in 2013. Wagner was the top Notre Dame diver with 263.90 points in the platform dive at last month’s ACC Championship, and posted the second-ranked team score in the discipline (285.70) at the Hawkeye Invitational.
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