Colorado Mesa University’s swim and dive teams hosted the A3 Performance Invite from Thursday, Nov. 30- Saturday, Dec. 2. CMU was joined by several other Division II universities for three days of events.
Twelve events took place on Day 1, with six events per gender. In men’s, the Mavericks won all six events of the day, with senior diver Sage D’Ambrosia in the lead with a final score of 560.15 points. D’Ambrosia and teammate Noah Macomber both earned spots at the NCAA Division II National Championship Diving Qualifier. Macomber finished second with 517.45 points in the preliminaries. Those wins were in the 3-meter dive events.
Three of the Maverick women finished with over 390 points in the 1-meter event. Kelsey Vreeman finished with 429.45 points in the discipline, and Brittany Dixon finished second with 407.10. Natalya Dahlke finished with 391.35 points in the preliminaries and took fifth place in the Maverick’s total six wins.
Swimmers Sam Bryant and Sky Hirsch reached individual meet records and also set meet records in the relays. Hirsch’s record was broken in the 50-yard freestyle during the preliminaries, with a time of 20.52, and then won the finals with 20.56. Hirsch, Chris Radomski, Morgan Bean and Noah Beaver finished the men’s relay with a time of 1:21.31.
Bryant bested last year’s record set by Jack Herron of Wyoming with a time of 4:31.88. Bryant, Eric Berg, Radomski, and Hirsch won the 400 medley relay with 3:20.71 at the end of the night, and Nico Tscherner qualified for a NCAA “B” in the 200 IM in 1:52.34.
On Day 2, the swim team set 11 NCAA Division II Championship provisional qualifying times. By this time, the Maverick men had scored 1,165 total points, and the women 1,032. Four of the Maverick men divers also qualified for the standard in the 1-meter event. Macomber and D’Ambrosia met school and individual meet records.
The Maverick women swimmers won three events and set seven NCAA provisional qualifying times. Vreeman and Dixon passed the standard for qualifying nationally on the 3-meter boards.
On the third and final day, the Maverick men’s swim team won six events out of the day’s seven, featuring another meet record by Hirsch and seven team members setting NCAA provisional qualifying times. Three CMU divers qualified for NCAA Division II National Championship, including D’Ambrosia. The CMU women won three of the day’s events, with two school records set, as well as three NCAA qualifying records in swimming and two in diving.
In the end, the Maverick men finished with a total of 1,553 points. This record-breaking win sets them 766 points ahead of Colorado School of Mines, whose team finished with 787 points. The Maverick women, with 1,340 points, finished 611 points ahead of Colorado School of Mines. Five men and three women in diving set NCAA qualifying marks throughout the weekend. The dive team’s next event will be the At Cal Baptist Diving Invitational in Riverside, Calif. on Dec. 15, and the swim team’s next event will be against Colorado School of Mines at CMU on Jan. 4.
