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The 2009 USA Diving Spring National Championships, sponsored by Speedo, begin today in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I found this thumbnail picture of the Hall of Fame pool on Flickr. It’s a nice change from the traditional picture (open in new window) that is used over and over and over…

You can obviously read more about the event on USADiving.org, but if you want to join the 21st century, you can also become a fan of USA Diving on Facebook and RSVP to the event. Sara Hildebrand, Drew Livingston, Hayden Jones, and Christina Loukas are already listed as attending.

Who else can you expect to see at the meet? The Facebook event name-drops a list of athletes who will be competing:

2009 World Championship team members Brittany Viola (Orlando, Fla.) of the University of Miami, Nick McCrory (Chapel Hill, N.C.), Allison Brennan (Huntington Beach, Calif.), and Kristian Ipsen (Clayton, Calif.). Divers defending their 2008 Spring Nationals 1-meter titles, Victoria Ishimatsu (Seal Beach, Calif.) and Ryan Helms (Moultrie, Ga.) are also scheduled to attend.

Meet results will be posted on DiveMeets.com, and you can check the full list of entries here.

Nine divers have been selected to the 2009 FINA World Championships Team.

The team members were hand-picked following a four-day selection camp held at Ohio State University. Although the camp included a meet format, results from the meet did not guarantee a spot on the team. Synchronized teams will be selected in May.

Six former Olympians were among the divers chosen. Troy Dumais will dive men’s 3-meter. Chris Colwill will join Dumais on 3-meter and will also compete 1-meter. Christina Loukas will dive 1-meter and 3-meter, and Ariel Rittenhouse will join Loukas on women

DiveMeet.com has released some early results from the “meet” associated with the U.S. World Diving Team Selection Camp. As a reminder, I put “meet” in quotes, because the winner of the events does not automatically receive a spot on the World Team. The format is being used to evaluate the divers’ consistency across several lists, performance (of course), as well as degree of difficulty.

There are some ups and downs to this format. As far as our World Team selection is concerned, we are more likely to get the best, most consistent divers to represent our country. On the other hand, this format makes it much more difficult for an up-and-coming athlete to break into the international scene. In swimming, where team selection is made by time, athletes have an opportunity to make the team by having a single great meet or swim. The down side? If athletes are shaved and tapered to qualify for the team, there’s no guarantee they will be in the same shape for the actual championships.

Highlights:
Christina Loukas, from Indiana University, was in the top 3 for all three 1m lists.
David Boudia, from Purdue University, had the high score for all 4 rounds of men’s 3m with 477.95 coming in the 3rd round.
Ariel Rittenhouse (Trojan Dive Club), and Christina Loukas traded off 1st and 2nd place performances in 3 straight rounds of women’s 3m.
Christopher Colwill, from Georgia Diving Club, was clearly dominant on men’s 1m, winning 2 of the 3 rounds and getting 2nd in the other.
Haley Ishimatsu (age 16, from Trojan Dive Club) won both rounds of women’s platform, while Nick McCrory and Thomas Finchum showed great consistency by staying in the top 3 for both platform lists.

>>More articles in Diving.
>>Diving World Team selection procedures.

Source: DiveMeet.com