The diving team performed well at the DFAL meet on May 10, qualifying several athletes for the North Coast Section championships, which will be held on May 15. Standouts included junior Morgan Matranga, who took 1st place for girls’ varsity, and sophomore Chester Halstead, who took 2nd place for boys’ varsity.
6 Campolindo athletes competed in diving, including juniors Matranga, Addie Naton and Kaitlin Steinleitner, sophomore Chester Halstead, and freshmen Jessica Sanborn and Sara Koenigsberg.
According to Naton, the team practices under the CLAM team name, which stands for the Campo, Las Lomas, Acalanes, and Miramonte diving team. “We practice together because it’s hard to find coaches, but we compete against each other,” Naton said.
Matranga said the junior varsity competitors each complete 6 dives. They get 3 scores out of 10, add them together, and then multiply by the degree of difficulty, or how hard the dive is. “You could get 10s on a front dive and that’s equivalent to getting 5s on a front 2 1/2. So you can’t do all easy dives, you have to do hard dives too,” Matranga said.
Sanborn was Campolindo’s only junior varsity diver and she finished in 5th place with a score of 155.40
Varsity participants partake in 11 dives, with the same scoring criteria as junior varsity. The qualifying score for NCS is 275 for girls and 250 for boys. Matranga finished with a score of 467.60, almost 70 points above the second place finisher. According to Matranga, each dive is about 40 points so she won by almost two full dives. In addition, she also received her first 10, a perfect score.
Naton, Koenigsberg, and Steinleitner finished with scores of 300.30, 295.45, and 281.70, respectively. Halstead finished with a 324.40. All varsity athletes qualified for NCS.
According to Matranga, the athletes go to NCS as individuals, and each school team is allowed to bring up to 4 competitors who have met the proper qualifications. Matranga said the team performed well because they “maxed out on NCS qualifiers” this year.
According to Matranga, she is seeded second at NCS. “I’d love to be top 4, that would be awesome. I was 5th last year so I want to do better than that,” Matranga said. Naton has high hopes for her teammate, Matranga, and believes she could win NCS. “Morgan’s all around a really good diver and she has such pretty dives,” Naton said.
Matranga said the team has improved a lot this season. “Everyone really stepped up and practiced a lot more this season and I think that’s really made a difference in all of us qualifying for NCS,” she said.
Matranga also attributes some of her success to her coach, Marie Estorge. “She puts lots of hours in. We have practice 5 days a week for 2 hours each day and 3 hours on Saturdays. She’s really good about making us condition and trying new things that we’re not comfortable with,” Matranga said.
In addition to qualifying for NCS, the dive team also helped earn points for the swim team. The girls’ swim team won 1st place in the championship meet.