Men's diving sets tone in Flagstaff

Saturday, December 5

Flagstaff, AZ

Grand Canyon

Northern Arizona Diving Invite

12/4/2020 3:50:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving

GCU open season at Lumberjack Diving Invite

By: Mark Oshidari

The Grand Canyon men's diving team completed the final day of the Lumberjack Diving Invitational on Sunday in Flagstaff.

Day 1

On the first of the three-day event at Northern Arizona, the GCU men dived from the 1-meter board.

The Lopes had strong finals from a trio of freshmen, which was highlighted by Isaac Poole with a fourth-place finish against a strong field. Poole earned 310.85 points, which is an NCAA zone qualifying score. GCU's Thomas Wesche took fifth place while another Lopes freshman, Reece Robles, landed in seventh place.

Day 2

On the second day, the Lopes struggled in preliminaries, but dived well in the finals on the 3-meter board. Wesche was GCU's top performer, finishing in fifth with a score of 274.04. Poole took sixth with a score of 262.90, while freshman Nicholas Gunn finished seventh at 255.55 and Robles was eighth with 252.45.

"This being the first NCAA competitions for our all-freshman squad, I see us being very competitive at WAC," Lopes head diving coach Hunter Shafer said. "We will aim to improve both difficulty of dives and scores in the next few months."

Day 3

The Lumberjack Invite wrapped up with the men's platform. The Lopes competed very well with improvements from the finals from all divers. Robles led the GCU divers in fifth with a score of 246.00, followed by Poole with 231.8, and Wesche with 215.60.
"This was a good event as this was the first platform the divers have had the opportunity to train and compete this year," said Shafer. "The highlight was Poole learning a new dive, a back 2 and ½ on 5 meter (a very hard dive), and receiving 6 ½ scores in competition beating very experienced platform divers in that round."