Dive-by-Dive Scoring & Results
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Steele Johnson's 10-meter platform victory for his seventh career senior title with USA Diving capped a week for the Purdue divers at the Winter Nationals in which the Boilermakers posted six Top 10 finishes.
Johnson scored 1,333.75 points to successfully defend his 2013 title and win his fourth individual national title on 10-meter. He scored more than 80 points on each of his last four dives in the finals, including 86.95 points on his front 4 ½ tuck and 82.80 points on his back 2 ½ with 2 ½ twists, both relatively new dives for him.
"We didn't come into this competition with a main goal of putting a bunch of points on the board or scoring well or winning any event. We came in with a goal of doing new events like 1-meter and 3-meter and doing new dives in all the events, especially on platform with the (4 ½ and the back 2 ½ with 2 ½ twists)," Johnson said. "We did those at the World Cup in synchro, but I didn't do them individually because they weren't good enough. Since this meet wasn't a qualifying meet for me, we decided we'd get the experience of doing them in a high pressure situation just to see how they'd go and what we need to work on. I definitely think we've taken the right steps."
Johnson finished the week as the men's top individual scorer at the Winter Nationals after also placing fifth on 3-meter (1245.25 cumulative score) Saturday and 10th on 1-meter (360.35) Tuesday. He led the Purdue men (91 points) to a second-place showing in the team scoring behind only Longhorn Aquatics (119.50). The Purdue women (24 points) were 10th of the 26 scoring teams.
Other Top 10 finishes for the Boilermakers included Jamie Bissett taking sixth in men's 3-meter (1210.45 cumulative score), MacKenzie Tweardy placing ninth in women's 10-meter (881.60) and Sean Mokhtari finishing 10th in men's 10-meter (1051.65).
Additionally, finals qualifiers Mary Beth Dunnichay took 11th in women's 3-meter (768.15 cumulative score) and Nate Cox placed 12th in the men's 10-meter (995.85).
Bissett moved up from 10th place after the semifinal round on Wednesday to sixth overall thanks to a list score of 425.85 in the finals.
Johnson went from fourth in prelims (388.75) to second after the semifinals (455.60) to event champion. His final list score of 489.25 allowed him to overcome Brandon Loschiavo's 17.5-point lead entering the finals. Johnson won the event by 73.90 as the only diver to surpass a cumulative total of 1,300. He moved into second place in program history behind only David Boudia with his score of 489.25 in the finals.
Also on Sunday, Ariel Rittenhouse won the women's 3-meter gold. Indiana University's Jessica Parratto and Amy Cozad teamed up for gold in women's synchronized 10-meter. Cory Bowersox and Zac Nees won the men's synchronized 3-meter title.
Brandon Loschiavo scored 1259.85 points for the silver and Jordan Windle finished third with 1251.00 points in the 10-meter final.
Rittenhouse scored 912.65 points over three lists of dives to take the individual 3-meter gold. Rittenhouse led heading into the finals but dropped to second place after missing her second-round reverse 2 ½ pike for just 22.50 points, allowing Laura Ryan to overtake her in the standings. Rittenhouse regained the lead in round four with a 68.20-point front 3 1/2 pike to head into the last round with a 3.65-point advantage over Ryan. Ryan dove first and earned 57 points on her front 2 ½ pike with a twist, and Rittenhouse followed with 61.50 points on the same dive to secure the gold medal.
"On my second dive, my gainer, I was really far from the end of the board and on the side. That's a really hard place to take off from, so I landed really short. I knew I had to do my next dives really well to make a comeback, so I just tried to forget about it and focus on my next dives. Luckily I was able to hit all of them and end up winning," said Rittenhouse, who concluded the championships with three medals, having already won a 1-meter silver and a synchronized 3-meter bronze.
Ryan finished second with 904.50 points, while Abby Johnston scored 902.40 points for bronze.
Parratto and Cozad paired together for 586.32 points to win the synchronized 10-meter title. It was their first national title together as a synchro team, although both had previously won synchro titles with other partners. They opened the finals by scoring more than 100 points on their two voluntaries and closed out their list with 74.88 points on their back 2 ½ with 1 ½ twists.
"I'm glad our final list was a good list, especially on the last day. We were kind of tired, but we overcame that and did really well," said Parratto, who won the individual 10-meter gold Saturday.
Murphy Bromberg and Emma Ivory-Ganja were second with 542.28 points, while Gracia Leydon Mahoney and Katrina Young scored 527.40 for third.
Bowersox and Nees secured their second national title together after finishing with 814.17 points for the men's 3-meter synchro title. They led by 24.42 points after Friday's preliminaries and held onto the lead throughout the finals, aided in part by a front 4 ½ that scored 87.78 points.
"We've been training pretty well prior to coming here. I knew we had a pretty good opportunity to do some good stuff. Coming into today, we had a decent-sized lead over second place so I was trying really hard to not really think about that. I just tried to act like we were all starting over at zero and keep my composure," Bowersox said.
Bradley Christensen and Bryce Klein scored 787.56 to win the silver medal, while Sam Dorman and Kristian Ipsen finished third at 783.27.
--Story by Jen Lowery, USA Diving
Receive Purdue Women's Swimming & Diving news via email. Sign up HERE.