I am very proud of all our competitors for this past weekend. We had many great and courageous performances on both days of the Novice Nationals that took place in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Starting with the youngest age bracket, group D. Saturday was the three meter springboard events for the girls. Jackie LaRonde dove excellently throughout the entire event. After many rounds she had a marginal lead over the rest of the pack. In the last round the diver who was in second place made a spectacular dive to over take Jackie for the win. We were very pleased to have Jackie win the silver medal. On Sunday, the 1 meter event was contested. This event had two of our newest competitive team members competing, Samantha Talani and Melina Havaedji as well as Jackie LaRonde. This was Melina and Samantha’s biggest event in which they have competed. Jackie was determined to win the gold that she narrowly missed the day before. She took lead in the first round and never gave it up. It wasn’t easy though, she won the event by only two points. Samantha dove courageously and was in 4th place after the first round and 5th place after the second round. Melina competed many of her dives better than she had ever performed them. Their final places were Jackie in first, Samantha in 9th and Melina in 10th place. Jackie also won the outstanding diver award for the Group D girls, which was the highest combined total for that age bracket.

The next age bracket is group C divers. Katrina Cieslik, and Kaitlyn Bailey competed in both springboards. Saturday was 3 meter event, both girls had put in much practice in the last few weeks for this event. Kaitlyn’s best dives were her inwards. On inward dive pike she received a 7 and some 6.5’s from the judges and her inward one and a half received her highest dive total of 29.45 points. Kaitlyn moved from 7th place to 6th place to 5th place in the last three dives. Katrina’s best dive was reverse dive tuck, a dive that has given her much trouble in the past. She received two 7’s and three 6.5’s to bring her dive total to 40 points. Katrina finished in 8th place. On Sunday the 1 meter event took place. Both girls are more confident on this board. Katrina had her game face on and was very focused on her dives. She was very consistent receiving mostly 6.5’s and 7’s for every dive. Her last dive of the competition was her twister which was also her newest. She made only a small mistake in the speed of her twist which led to lower scores. Kaitlyn was also very consistent. Doing mostly the same dives that Katrina performed almost as well. Kaitlyn’s only mistake came on her back dive tuck, which is normally a very good dive for her. They placed very well in the competition of 12 athletes, Katrina was 4th and Kaitlyn was 5th.

Lastly we had Emilia Cieslik and Tessa Jones competing on Sunday in the 1 meter events. Emilia had to miss her 3 meter event the day before so she could study for exams, so she really wanted to do well on 1 meter. She started out strong in 2nd place after the first round. She stayed in 2nd, and in the third round the gap had grown to almost 18 points. Starting in the optional rounds, Emilia mounted a come back. After her back 1.5 tuck, the lead was cut to 12 points. In the next round Emilia almost erased the deficit with an excellent forward double tuck. In the last round her inward 1.5 tuck got her 42.9 points putting the pressure on. In the end it was too much to handle for the other competitors. Emilia placed first and won the gold medal. Next was quite possibly Tessa’s last competitive diving event ever. Tessa is going off to university next year and diving is going to something that she does for fun and to relieve stress. Tessa was ready for the event having put much effort into practice and mentally being ready for the competition. She dove confidently and consistently receiving many 6.5’s and 7’s throughout the event. Tessa’s highest point dive was reverse dive tuck which got a dive score of 35.10 points. When it was all said and done Tessa won the silver medal. Congratulations to her and to the whole team.