Texas will compete in its final meet of the semester Thursday: the UT Diving Invitational — the first meet of the qualifying season. The women’s diving squad runs deep in talent and experience with a few members having competed in the world championships in Barcelona this past summer.
Redshirt senior Maren Taylor won her first national title on the 1-meter board and finished 11th in the 3-meter final at this summer’s World Championships — her first international meet. This success follows a productive junior season in which she won the 3-meter event at the NCAA Zone D Championships.
“It has started a new part of my career because it has made me have new, bigger goals and it allows me to look beyond just this year,” Taylor said. “I definitely want to build on this past summer.”
Despite her success on the international stage, Taylor prefers to focus on the short term and her impending return to competition, as a plethora of injuries has kept her out of competition
this season.
“The [2016] Olympics remains one of my biggest goals, but I am taking it one day at a time and not looking too far ahead,” Taylor said.
Fellow divers, junior Emma Ivory-Ganja and freshman Murphy Bromberg have made some waves of their own with combined first place finishes on the 3-meter event four out of their five meets this fall. Ivory-Ganja is a transfer this year from UCLA, despite being initially recruited out of the Woodlands High School by Texas head coach Matt Scoggin. Bromberg won the 10-meter platform event at this summer’s national championships after placing seventh at the world championships in the platform synchronized event.
“We have a really strong team this year, probably one of the strongest teams in the country with the combination of everybody’s individual talents on the different boards,” Taylor said.
The UT Diving Invitational attracts notable big names Miami (Fla.), Arizona State, Hawaii and UC-Berkeley — the current team of 2012 Olympic champion Missy Franklin.
Scoggin is quite pleased with his team’s performance this fall season and entertains high hopes for the week’s competition.
“I expect that they physically are feeling a little bit better because of the lighter weights they are on this week,” Scoggin said. “I expect them to have multiple signs of positive progress. They have worked very hard this fall and I think in each of the events they will see their progress happening.”
