Colorado State University Athletics
CSU's Hall, Knudson final at Zone E diving championships
3/14/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming & Diving
March 14, 2008
Thursday/Day 1 results in PDF format 
Friday/Day 2 results in PDF format
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Seniors Elyse Hall and Karin Knudson delivered stellar individual efforts at the 2008 NCAA Zone E Diving Championships Thursday and Friday at the Air Force Academy, but the event represented Knudson's final collegiate performance, and in all likelihood Hall's as well.
Those who perform well enough at zone competitions advance to the NCAA national championships, but despite advancing to the finals, Knudson fell short on the 1- and 3-meter boards, and Hall's efforts in the 1-meter are likely to keep her just out of reach.
"Elyse is very close to making the NCAA cut," said CSU diving coach Kevin Witt. "Basically, the top three are guaranteed to go, and her odds were pretty good had she finished fourth, or maybe fifth."
But Hall finished sixth in the 1-meter competition Thursday night with a combined score of 489.75. Stanford's Margaret Hostage (577.05) won the event. Now, like a basketball team on the bubble, Hall waits to learn whether her score is good enough to advance to the national championships.
"She's close," Witt said, "but she's probably not going to make it at sixth. It would be a big surprise if I get a phone call (Saturday). Sixth place is still pretty good. This is a difficult zone with all the Pac-10 teams here. It was good for her to get into the finals."
Hall, a senior from Buffalo Grove, Ill., wrapped up zone competition Friday by finishing 19th in the preliminaries of the 3-meter, becoming that event's highest-scoring diver who didn't move on. Only the top 18 scorers advance to the finals.
"Elyse was really, really strong and consistent on the 1-meter yesterday," Witt said. "She was very steady, nothing spectacular, but steady all day. At a meet like this, everybody's good but a lot of girls will slip and miss things. That's why she ended up sixth.
"Then today on the 3-meter, she missed one dive and it knocked her down. I think she was 13th or 14th going into that last dive. If you look at the results, everybody's lumped in pretty close together, so one dive can move you 10 spots in either direction."
Knudson, who hails from Estes Park, Colo., reached the finals in both the 1- and 3-meter competitions. In the preliminaries on the 1-meter board Thursday, she finished 13th among 42 divers with a 229.95 score to qualify for the finals. In those finals Thursday night, she ranked 18th with a combined score of 442.15.
Then, on Friday morning, Knudson's preliminary score on the 3-meter board qualified her for the afternoon finals, where she also finished 18th. Witt was proud of Knudson, a biological sciences major with a 3.80 grade-point average, after a difficult personal stretch following the Mountain West Conference championships two weeks ago.
"Karin had a really, really good conference meet," he said. "She was peaking at that time, and I think she might have been a little tired this week. But she hung in there, and did pretty well. She finaled on both boards and that's not an easy thing to do. A lot was expected of them since conference. They had to make up schoolwork, then get ready to leave again right before spring break."
Hall and Knudson earned invitations to this week's competition based on several outstanding scores this past season.
"To final on both springboards was impressive," Witt said. "I think they did a good job representing our conference. It was nice to have two CSU divers among all the kids from Stanford, USC, Arizona and other really strong swim programs."
