March 23, 2017
| NCAA WOMEN'S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS | |
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| Thursday, Mar. 23-Saturday, Mar. 25 Prelims: 10 a.m. - Finals 6 p.m. | |
| IU Natatorium | Indianapolis, Ind. | |
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INDIANAPOLIS -- Penn State sophomore diver Hector Garcia Boissier (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) earned honorable mention All-America honors in the 1-meter dive, while senior Shane Ryan (Havertown, Pa.) narrowly missed an evening swim in the 50 freestyle on the first day of competition Thursday at the 2017 NCAA Men's Swimming & Diving Championships in the IU Natatorium.
Garcia is now 2-for-2 in getting six extra dives in the 1-meter at NCAAs after also placing 15th in the event as a freshman. This year he posted a score of 326.65 in the preliminaries and 313.95 in the finals.
"Hector did a real nice job making it to consolations and putting some points on the board for us," said Penn State head coach Tim Murphy. "The competition is really strong, but he did a great job and I think he's very excited for the 3-meter tomorrow."
Three-hundredths of a second were all that kept Ryan from earning an evening swim. His time of 19.31 was the second fastest of his career, but it placed him 17th overall in the preliminaries.
"He just needed to be a little better this morning to get a second swim," said Murphy. "It wasn't a bad swim, but in the 50, everything has to click. For comparison he was 19.6 in the morning at Big Tens, so he just needed to be a little faster here this morning to swim again at night."
Ryan will go into Friday looking to not only swim in the evening, but also earn a medal. He enters as the second seed in the 100 back with a top time of 44.65 seconds, just four-hundredths of a second shy of the season-best swim by Cal's Ryan Murphy, the reigning three-time NCAA gold medalist in the event and the 2016 Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the 100-meter backstroke. Ryan is a two-time NCAA medalist in the 100 back, earning silver in 2014 and bronze in 2015 before taking last season off to train in Ireland for the 2016 Summer Olympics. He was a semifinalist in the 100m back in Rio.
"Shane has a huge challenge ahead of him tomorrow," said Murphy. "There are probably six or seven guys who have been in the 44-second range now, so he's going to have to be real good in the morning."
Garcia will be looking to crack the top-16 or better in the 3-meter dive Friday.
The morning preliminaries Friday and Saturday will be streamed live on NCAA.com and indianasportscorp.org/ncaasd, while ESPN3 will stream the championship finals sessions live on Friday and Saturday. ESPNU will air a two-hour, tape-delayed broadcast Wednesday, Apr. 5 at 5 p.m.
Friday, Mar. 24
100 Backstroke -- Ryan
3-meter Diving - Garcia
Saturday, Mar. 25
100 Freestyle - Ryan