BATON ROUGE — The LSU diving corps will open the 2011 portion of their schedule at the Tennessee Diving Invitational, beginning Monday at the Allan Jones Aquatics Center in Knoxville, Tenn.
LSU is one of 14 schools with divers competing at the three-day competition, including Southeastern Conference teams Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and host Tennessee. The prelims will begin at 9 a.m. (CST) on Monday and Tuesday for the men’s and women’s springboard events. Wednesday’s platform events will start at 11 a.m.
“We compete at an invitational each year right after the holidays to get some competitive experience in a large field with some strong SEC and ACC teams,” co-head coach Doug Shaffer said. “This will also give us another opportunity to compete in a format very similar to the SEC and NCAA Championships.”
All six LSU divers competing at the Tennessee Diving Invite have already qualified for the NCAA Zone Diving Regional in March.
Freshman Daniel Helm and junior Brian Gemberling will spearhead the men’s efforts. Helm is third in the SEC in the platform competition (331.40) and holds the team’s best three-meter score (369.10), while Gemberling leads the team in the one-meter (341.48) and is 10th in the conference in that event.
Junior Matt Vieke ranks 11th in the league in the one-meter (337.35), and freshman Sean McKinney is 11th in the platform (290.60).
Sophomore Rebecca St. Germain, the reigning SEC Freshman Diver of the Year, is the Lady Tigers’ top diver as she is ranked in the conference’s top five in both springboard events. Fellow sophomore Elle Schmidt is coming off her finest effort of the season at the LSU Diving Invitational and possesses a top-15 conference score in the platform.