Young squad divers of Cambridge Diving Development Centre recently attended the White Rose Invitational event held in Leeds, showcasing some great diving, with multiple top-ten finishes and medals for the team.
The first event of day one was the Girls group D platform event, in which Cambridge had four divers taking part. Florence Tibbatts performed some lovely dives and took 4th place overall – just missing out on the podium spots. Sophia Howard, Hallie Cave and Karina Baxendale took 9th, 10th and 11th place respectively in a closely knit competition.
The second event of the day was the Boys and Girls group B event in which Cambridge had three divers competing. William Tibbatts and Jack Hall put in solid performances to get spots in the finals scheduled for the afternoon, while Eva Tsang placed 9th overall in Girls B.
The final preliminary event of the day was the Girls group D event. Cambridge had great representation in this event with six divers taking part. Making their competition debuts, Kirsty Matthams and Melodie Meeds placed 28th and 29th respectively, taking away some important competition experience. Karina placed 20th overall, with Florence in 13th closely following teammate Sophia who secured herself a top 10 finish in 9th place. Star of the show was Hallie who placed 6th and secured a spot in the finals.
Come the afternoon of day one, the Cambridge divers were ready for some fierce competition, and up first were the boys. Jack performed some great dives and placed 5th with teammate William edging that little bit further ahead to secure the bronze medal – a wonderful achievement. Hallie was up next in the Girls D, and showcased her skills to jump three places in the final, also taking home a bronze medal.
Day two of the White Rose event saw more first time competitors from Cambridge. The first was James Hanlon in the Boys group E event, competing alongside Digby Bord in what was his second outing for the club. Both boys performed well with Digby getting a new personal best score placing 14th whilst James just pipped him at 13th.
Up next was the Girls group C event in which three CDT divers took part. Annie Powell had her first national event for Cambridge, holding her nerve and diving well in a large field of competitors to place 31st. Yuting Wang also put in some great dives to place 16th. However, team mate Yuzu Baxendale was the star of the show scoring a perfect set of 10’s from the judges and securing herself a finals spot. Later that evening, Yuzu competed again and jumped-up two places to finish in 4th, and was also presented with the ‘perfect score award’ having been the only diver over the course of the weekend to score three 10’s on one dive.
Dan Murphy, professional coach at CDDC said ‘All our divers can be pleased with their diving and take comfort in the meet as a primer for the upcoming Swim England Talent Games event. Its great to see so many Cambridge divers taking to the stage and representing the club, with the medals and personal bests motivating them to keep training hard’.
