University of Richmond Athletics
Divers Start 2015 Against Top Competition At Tenn.
01/02/2015 | Women's Swimming & Diving
Richmond's three divers will start 2015 by competing with top divers in the country at the Tennessee Diving Invitational this weekend, Saturday to Monday in Knoxville, Tennessee.
There will be 55 women in competition from a variety of conferences: 25 SEC, 13 ACC, 8 CAA, 4 Big Twelve, 3 Atlantic Ten, 2 AAC.
Six of the Top 20 teams in the nation are represented, as ranked by College Swimming.com's latest rankings for combined swimming and diving teams.
Two more teams ranked in the Top 40 are represented at the Invitational... Georgia (4), Missouri (11), Tennessee (14), Auburn (15), Kentucky (19) and LSU (20) are among teams in the field, along with N.C. State (33), SMU (39) and Iowa, Clemson, Towson and Drexel.
Richmond's divers have been together at UT since Tuesday, December 30, on their winter training trip at the alma mater of head diving coach Sean Letsinger. They will remain in Knoxville to finish training after the meet, returning to campus next Tuesday, January 6.
Sophomore Irina Chiulli (Westwood, Massachusetts) has already qualified for the NCAA Zones, but continues to work on her diving programs in search of a higher finish than her fourth (3m) and 6th (1m) at the A-10 Championships as a freshman. She and her teammates, sophomore Mikaela Gekas-Robinson (Woodbury, New Jersey) and freshman Laura Rokop (Carmel, Indiana), are looking to build on a strong fall competition season into the A-10 Championships in late February.
Richmond will compete in the 3m competition Saturday (preliminary round starts at noon with finals immediately after). The 1m is contested on Sunday, starting at noon with the same schedule as Saturday. Richmond divers will not compete in the platform diving competition on Monday.
The divers will rejoin the swimmers to compete again as a team at Virginia Tech on Saturday, January 10. The Kentucky divers will join the competition in Blacksburg to make it a three-team diving meet.
Players Mentioned
