With the bulk of the Pac-10 schedule looming ahead, the UCLA women’s dive team is staring straight at fierce competition and high-pressure meets.
But first, they get to take a trip to Hawaii.
The team will compete today and Saturday in the Hawaii Invitational in Honolulu against three schools: Hawai’i, Connecticut and Wisconsin.
The meet will feature the 3-meter competition today and the tower event followed by the 1-meter on Saturday.
“The opportunity to compete is always important,” dive coach Tom Stebbins said. “I’ve never been (to Hawaii) with the team. We’re going to see some of the best athletes in the conference within the next five or six weeks, and we’d be really remiss if we didn’t get to see Hawaii in the back half of the year and get an evaluation of where we are, relative to where they are right now.”
Indeed, the University of Hawai’i will present the Bruins with their biggest challenge this weekend. The meet will be highlighted by a face-off between UCLA’s junior All-American Marisa Samaniego and Hawai’i’s Emma Friesen. Friesen is an NCAA qualifier and is one of only two divers to defeat Samaniego this season. Friesen won the 1-meter competition at the Trojan Diving Invitational last November, sliding Samaniego to second.
“I’m really excited (to face Friesen) because there are always one or two people I’m keeping my eye on,” Samaniego said. “It’s always fun to dive with (Friesen) because it makes you raise your game a little bit. It will be good to see how she’s doing and how much work I need to do before NCAA zones, where I’ll meet with her again.”
This weekend’s invitational is the team’s first meet since the Hoosierland Invitational held in the middle of November. Since that meet, the divers have had eight weeks to practice, which they initially spent reviewing the fundamentals.
Now, however, after a series of two- and three-a-day practices over break, the divers are working on fine-tuning specifics and are even being scored by Stebbins on dives they execute in practice.
“We’re now getting ready for the peak part of our season,” Stebbins said. “I think we’re looking a lot more now at how we prepare for the competitive part and the mental part. It’s a little bit more of a performance-based approach.
“We go to this meet this weekend and that kind of kicks us off into the end of the year. Then we’ll flow pretty smoothly into the end of the season. … My feeling is that the game really starts now.”