March 1, 2007
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Three members of the Notre Dame men’s swimming and diving team will compete this Friday through Sunday (March 2-4) at the NCAA Zone C Diving Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich. Juniors Steven Crowe (Brockport, N.Y./Brockport) and Sam Stoner (Valparaiso, Ind./Valparaiso) along with sophomore Michael Bulfin (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla./St. Thomas Aquinas) will be looking to qualify for the 2007 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships, which take place March 15-17 in Minneapolis, Minn.
The one-meter competition will take place on Friday in the University of Michigan’s Canham Natatorium, followed by the three-meter on Saturday and the platform event on Sunday. Prelims begin at 11:00 a.m. (ET) on Friday and Saturday, with the finals slated to begin at 1:45 p.m. those days. On Sunday, the platform prelims begin at 2:45 p.m. and the finals will get underway at 5:00 p.m.
A total of 41 competitors, including all three Irish divers, will be competing in both the one-meter and three-meter events, while 18 athletes will be a part of the platform competition. Bulfin is the only Irish diver participating in the platform.
Bulfin qualified for the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships last season, becoming just the third student-athlete in program history to do so. He placed fourth off the three-meter board at the 2006 Zone C meet, with a point total of 634.40. That marked the highest finish ever for a Notre Dame male diver at the Zone Championships. He ended up finishing 18th in the preliminaries of the three-meter competition and 27th in the one-meter prelims at the NCAA Championships.
Stoner finished 10th off the one-meter board and 17th in the three-meter at last year’s Zone Championships. As a freshman in 2005, he placed 28th off the three-meter board and 17th off the one-meter board. This will be Crowe’s first-ever appearance at the NCAA Zone Championships.
The Fighting Irish diving corps is coming off a solid showing at the 2007 BIG EAST Championships, which here held Feb. 14-17. Bulfin garnered two all-conference accolades as he placed second in both the one-meter and three-meter events. Stoner took third in the one-meter to receive all-BIG EAST honors.
Bulfin posted Notre Dame’s top point totals off both the one-meter and three-meter boards this season, with respective totals of 339.40 and 378.30. His one-meter score is a program record. Stoner ranked second on the squad in both boards with a one-meter total of 338.75 and a three-meter high-score of 363.65. Crowe’s top one-meter score was 299.30, while he had a high-total of 352.28 off the three-meter. Both of those marks ranked him third on the team.
For the second straight year, Notre Dame diving coach Caiming Xie copped the BIG EAST Men’s Diving Coach of the Year award. He has helped the Irish produce five all-conference accolades on the men’s side over the past two seasons.
Round-by-round live results of the 2007 NCAA Zone C Diving Championships can be found at www.divemeets.com.
–ND–