BATON ROUGE — The LSU divers will kick off the new year and second half of their season in Athens, Ga., when they square off in the Georgia Diving Invitational and Shootout Sunday through Tuesday at the Gabrielsen Natatorium.
The invite is slated to begin at 10 a.m. (CST) on Sunday and Monday for the springboard prelims with the finals following at approximately 12:45 p.m. and a shootout for the top six divers at 5 p.m. The athletes will compete in one round on platform Tuesday.
LSU will go up against a number of top-flight divers from a 16-team field that includes SEC opponents Alabama, Auburn, Florida, host Georgia and Tennessee along with Clemson, Drexel, East Carolina, Iowa State, Navy, North Carolina, Penn State, Rider, SMU and Virginia.
In addition, the competition will give the Tigers an opportunity to get a feel for Georgia’s facility, the site of the 2010 SEC Championships.
“We’re excited to be here,” LSU diving coach Doug Shaffer said. “Georgia always puts on a first-class meet in a great facility. We had a couple of good days of training around the holidays prior to coming here. We’re looking forward to carrying on the success we had at the Alabama Diving Invitational in December with additional finals performances in Athens.”
Sophomores Brian Gemberling and Matt Vieke and freshmen Rebecca St. Germain, Elle Schmidt and Jesse Lyman will represent LSU.
Gemberling and Vieke will look to build on strong efforts at the Alabama Christmas Diving Classic two weeks ago where each posted a pair of top-five finishes. Both are ranked in the conference’s top 10 in all three diving events.
St. Germain took fifth in the one-meter at the Christmas Classic in her first competition back after surgery and holds the fourth-highest score in the SEC in that event (310.95). Schmidt qualified for the finals of the three-meter and placed sixth overall in the platform at Alabama.
Lyman’s top score in the platform (238.85) is 10th in the SEC.