BATON ROUGE — LSU divers Hali Saucier and Paige Brown will compete against 125 of the nation’s best divers at the 2005 U.S. National Diving Championships, Aug. 9-13, from the Huntersville Family Fitness and Aquatics Center.
The five-day competition sponsored by Speedo features five events for both the men and women. The top diver in each individual event will be named national champion, while the top six divers on the 3-meter and platform will qualify for the U.S. national team.
Events get underway at 11 a.m. CT Tuesday with the preliminaries of the men’s 3-meter. The women’s platform prelims will follow at 3 p.m. CT, in which both Saucier and Brown will compete.
Saucier, a native of Gig Harbor, Wash., is slated to compete in two events during the week after qualifying for the platform and 1-meter at the Zone C Midwest Championships two weeks ago. Saucier scored a runner-up finish in the 1-meter (418.50) and followed that up with a fourth-place score of 373.90 in the platform.
Saucier and Brown are the first LSU divers of the new millennium to qualify for the national championships, and both expressed the upcoming experience as a benchmark for the future of the program.
“I’m excited for this opportunity,” said Saucier. “We have never been classified as national-caliber athletes and now we are starting to prove people wrong. This is the start of a new era. It won’t be a surprise when LSU athletes make nationals on more of a consistent basis.”
Brown advanced to the national championships in the platform with a fifth-place score of 359.90 — a remarkable feat considering the soon-to-be sophomore began diving platform nearly a year ago to the day.
“It wasn’t even my dreams to qualify for the national championships,” said the Zionsville, Ind., native. “Coach (Doug) Shaffer provided a vision for us and helped us achieve it. This experience on a national level will help us as the fall approaches.”
Shaffer has guided the LSU diving program to new heights in just three seasons as diving coach. The development of Saucier and Brown is a vibrant sign of progress as the 2005-06 season approaches.
“It’s a tribute to the hard work that they have brought to the program,” said Shaffer. “They have developed tremendously. When I came to LSU three years ago it was turnover period. Now, they are the first divers in at least the past three seasons to qualify for nationals. The experience will readily manifest itself from this point forward. It sets a standard that you have got to compete at this level in order to qualify for Olympic trials.”