March 23, 2018
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MINNEAPOLIS - Penn State junior Hector Garcia Boissier (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) placed ninth in the 3-meter springboard on his second day of competition at the NCAA Men's Swimming & Diving Championships Thursday at the University of Minnesota's Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center.
Garcia won the consolation final with a score of 406.85 after scoring 391.60 points in the preliminaries to rank 10th. It marks his second honorable mention All-America finish in the event and his best performance in the NCAA Championships.
"Coming into the 3-meter event, we knew a pivotal dive was going to be his 4th round reverse 3.5 somersault," said Penn State diving coach Dennis Ceppa."It is the most difficult dive being done in the contest and is still somewhat new to Hector. Unfortunately a great takeoff led to a missed exit from the dive and left hector battling his way back to a scoring position once again. His skill and the composure under pressure he illustrated gave him another chance to come back for a consolation final.
"In the consolation final Hector truly shined.From start to finish he was in complete control of his diving and the competition. I could not be more proud of Hector's performance and how he's represented himself and Penn State here at the national championship so far."
Thursday, Garcia earned honorable mention All-America honors in the 1-meter for a third consecutive year with his highest career finish, placing 12th. He advanced to the consolation finals with a preliminary score of 357.60, which was good enough for 11th overall. He then totaled 343.55 points in the consolation finals to place 12th.
"Hector had a great showing in the 1-meter prelim," said Ceppa."A slight miss on his last dive cost him a spot in the A final. Diving is a sport of details and at this level those details can make or break a performance. I'm very thankful that Hector is at a level where a slight miss calculation won't take him out of a scoring position completely.All in all he finished in a better position than last year so we have to be thankful for a solid event."
"These performances are a real credit to the work Hector and [diving] Coach [Dennis] Ceppa have done," said Penn State swimming & diving head coach Tim Murphy.
Garcia will next compete in the platform starting at 1:00 p.m. ET Friday. The preliminaries are being streamed on BTN 2GO and the final session will be streamed on WatchESPN.