Photo Courtesy of Jacob Funk

TUCSON, Ariz. – Junior Chelsea Jackson and sophomore Alexa Geiger led the Northern Arizona divers on the first day of competition at the Wildcat Diving Invitational with appearances in the finals. Jackson advanced to the championship final and finished fourth overall, while Geiger dove in the consolation final placing 15th.

"Today was very positive," said diving coach Nikki Huffman. "We didn't hit everything, but we've been working really hard to put things together. There were a couple of areas where we could've done a couple of dives better, but overall I thought it was a very good, positive first day."

Jackson's fourth-place finish was her best Wildcat Diving finish of her career as she jumped a spot in the finals after concluding the preliminaries in fifth. She advanced to the finals with a prelim score of 265.30 and increased her score to 281.40 to leap past Boise State's Erin Kohlbeck in the final standings. She would finish behind three Arizona divers and wound up besting a fourth Wildcat diver in addition to Kohlbeck and a pair of BYU competitors.

Geiger moved on to the consolation finals after a score of 239.00 that put her 11th after the preliminary round. She would finish 15th after a consolation score of 213.65 in a dramatic jump from her 39th-place finish last year on the 3-meter springboard.

The Lumberjacks posted a solid overall day with all five of their divers placing near the upper half of the 33 participants. Behind Jackson and Geiger, junior Carlye Townsend finished 18th in the preliminaries with a score of 213.70, a mere four points out of qualifying for the top 16. Townsend improved by 17 spots from a year ago after she placed 35th at the meet.

Not far behind Townsend were NAU's two freshmen divers who had solid debuts against a competitive field at their first Wildcat Diving meet. Emma Simmonds placed 20th with a score of 210.10 and Alyssa Loeffelman was just one spot back in 21st with a score of 205.70.

"The freshmen did a great job and they were very poised in handling themselves in a big competition," Huffman said. "That's exciting to see and I'm excited to see what they can do in the future."

The diving unit will head back to UA's Hillenbrand Aquatic Center on Saturday for day two of the meet. They will compete on the 1-meter springboard with preliminaries slated for a 12 noon start.