Juniors Marisa Samaniego and Tess Schofield jumpstarted the UCLA dive season with wins in two of the three events held at the USC Invitational over the weekend.
Samaniego topped the field of 22 divers with a score of 288.70 in the 3-meter and recorded a second-place score of 270.95 in the 1-meter.
Schofield edged out Christine Petrilli of USC for the win in platform, notching a score of 262.30.
Coach Tom Stebbins said he was pleased with the team’s performance and praised the work of Samaniego.
“I think that Marisa was very good Friday,” Stebbins said. “I think she is knocking on the door of elitism. I don’t know exactly when she is going to break through to that place that will almost make her untouchable, but I think she is capable of that.”
Stebbins was also impressed by junior Shannon Pirozzi, who placed sixth in the 3-meter with a personal-best score of 255.15.
“(Pirozzi) broke her personal best by 25 or 30 points in her event,” Stebbins said. “She’s been very, very sick for about the last 10 days. She just was, I thought, incredibly tough.”
Aside from the event wins, the Bruins qualified three divers for the finals of the 1-meter and the platform, and qualified five divers for the 3-meter. Although no team scores were tabulated, UCLA qualified more divers for finals than any of the other four schools competing.
Yet despite the strong start to the season, Stebbins said that the girls can still work on their day-to-day decision making. He said the meet illustrated some of the mishaps that can occur if the girls fail to prepare adequately during the week.
“This sport is a sport where if you make a bad decision early in the week, it can really kind of haunt you on Saturday,” Stebbins said. “When we allow things to kind of get away from us during the week or on a day-to-day basis, that stuff really shows up on meet day.”
Schofield said that finally competing in a meet was very important because the girls needed to experience the high-pressure environment.
“There is nothing like the conditions of a meet,” Schofield said. “You can try and emulate that in practice and try to mentally put yourself in that situation, but there is nothing like it when you’re standing on the board, all alone, all eyes are on you and you have to put all the work of the past eight weeks into five or six dives.”
And of course, Samaniego said performing well against USC is always a plus, even if no “winning” team is crowned.
“It’s nice to walk through (the USC) campus in your UCLA stuff and know that you did well,” Samaniego said. “We love going against them. You hope, not only for your sake, to do well, but you’re also representing UCLA, and it’s cool to represent UCLA and beat the rival.”
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the weekend’s invitational was that it gave the team confidence that it could compete in the Pac-10, as it opens conference play against Arizona State on Nov. 9.
“I think as a team, we showed that we are going to be tough within the Pac-10 again this year,” Samaniego said. “I think it was a pretty good meet. We were all a little bit nervous getting back out there, but I think it was a good starting point.”