VIVI DEL ANGEL WINS NCAA DIVING CHAMPIONSHIP

The Minnesota Golden Gophers can add another NCAA women’s diving champion to their ranks. Saturday at the NCAA Championships Gopher sophomore Vivi Del Angel won the women’s platform diving competition, giving Minnesota their first ever NCAA title in the event.

Del Angel competed in three different diving events on the weekend at the NCAA Championships but did not qualify for the finals in either of the springboard events—she saved the best for last. In Saturday morning’s prelims, Del Angel recorded a five dive score of score of 308.80, putting her in second place heading into the evening’s finals session. She was even better in the finals scoring 327.90 in five dives to take the crown. The next closest competitor was over 23 points behind Del Angel in total score.

While Del Angel is the first Gopher woman to ever win the platform diving NCAA title, she is now the 5th all time in program history to take home a NCAA diving crown following in the footsteps of Chris Curry in 1981, Kelci Bryant in 2010 and 2011, Yu Zhou in 2015 and 2017, and Sarah Bacon in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. She will have two more years to try and join the trio of Gophers with multiple NCAA diving titles.

Elsewhere at the NCAA Championships Minnesota also got a pair of other All-American performances. On Thursday Gopher freshman Elna Widerstrom finished in 6th place in the women’s 1-meter springboard earning First Team All-American honors. On Saturday Minnesota got another great performance from senior Megan Van Berkom in the 400 IM. In the morning prelims she broke the Minnesota school record with a time of 4:02.53. She would do it again in the finals going a second faster at 4:02.51 to finish in 5th place and earn her 3rd career All-American honor.

Overall, the Minnesota women placed 20th as a team at the 2024 NCAA National Championships. It is now 18 straight seasons the Gophers have finished in the Top 25 at the NCAA Championships.

The Gopher men head to the men’s NCAA Championships this weekend in Indianapolis with ten members of the squad but will miss multiple time NCAA Champion Max McHugh who graduated last spring.

2024-03-28T01:24:04Z dg43tfdfdgfd