High school divers head to regional qualifiers

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

This weekend, local high school divers will compete in a regional competition in order to qualify for state championships.

Diving coach David Horne says there are four regions in the state: Cook Inlet, Fairbanks, Southeast Alaska, and Northern Lights, which includes Kodiak and 11 other places.

Horne says Kodiak has a solid program. He reflects back on last year’s championships.

“We took 8 boys and 8 girls from our region, so half of  the divers at the state competition were from our region, so it’s much stronger right now than the other regions.”

He says all the Northern Lights teams will meet in Wasilla, which also boasts a number of impressive female divers this year.

“Wasilla went out and found some girls that have a gymnastics background, which is a great lead-in into diving.”

Horne says the top two scores for the region automatically head to state, and a total of 16 divers of each gender compete from all regions.

He explains the students go before judges for scoring and demonstrate a number of different dives.

“For a championship meet, they have to do 11 dives, one from each category, being one front dive, one back, one in reverse, which is bending back towards the board, one inward which is kinda jumping away and diving towards the board, and then one twister. So, they have two of each of those, and then a third dive of some choice.”

If the six Kodiak students, four girls and two boys, are successful this weekend, they’ll fly to Palmer High School next weekend for the championships.

The participating divers are Sage Alvarez, Elianah Micael, Stephen Parnell, Isabella Pentaloza, Sayuri Seto, and Ruben Ulatan.