June 9, 2017
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Penn State rising junior men's diver Hector Garcia Boissier (Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) and former men's swimmer Shane Ryan (Havertown, Pa.) will compete in the 17th FINA World Swimming and Diving Championships to highlight their respective summers, while rising junior women's swimmer Ally McHugh (Philadelphia, Pa.) will look to join them by competing in the 2017 Phillips 66 U.S. National Championships and World Championship Trials.
Garcia, competing for his native Spain, is also slated to compete in the European Diving Championships, June 12-18, in Kiev, Ukraine, while Ryan will cap his collegiate career by competing for Ireland in the World University Games in Taipei, Taiwan, from August 19-30.
The World Championships will be hosted in Budapest, Hungary, July 14-30. McHugh will attempt to qualify for the U.S. team by competing in the U.S. world trials at the Indiana University Natatorium on the campus of IUPUI in Indianapolis, June 27-July 1.
Garcia will be competing with his older brother Nico in the 3-meter synchronized dive. The duo earned a silver medal in May competing in the FINA Diving Madrid Grand Prix. Hector is coming off his sophomore season at Penn State, during which he broke the school 1- and 3-meter diving records and cracked the Top 16 in both events at the NCAA Championships to earn honorable mention All-America recognition.
Ryan returns to the Ireland team for the first time since the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, where he was a semifinalist in the 100-meter backstroke. His focus at Worlds will be in the 50- and 100-meter backstrokes and 400-meter medley relay, while he slated to compete in the 100m back at the World University Games. Ryan spent a year in residence in Ireland training for the Olympics, and then returned to Penn State at the conclusion of the games for his senior season with the Nittany Lions. Ryan leaves Happy Valley with three individual school records, three relay records, two NCAA medals, four All-America nods - including one in the 100-yard backstroke this past season - and four Big Ten gold medals.
McHugh will test herself against the United States' best for the first time since competing at the U.S. Olympic trials in the 200 and 400 individual medleys last summer. She will look to build off her breakout sophomore campaign for Penn State in which she broke multiple school records, medaled at Big Ten Championships and posted a pair of honorable mention All-America performances at the NCAA Championships. She swam personal bests in the 400 IM, 500 free and mile at the Big Ten Championships to advance to NCAA's, highlighted by a school record and silver medal in the 400 IM. McHugh then placed 14th in the 400 IM at NCAA's and set a school record in the mile to place 10th.