The trip from Boston University’s Competition Pool to Harvard University’s Blodgett pool is not a long one, and BU divers Brian Lawler and Alex Crerar certainly didn’t need to worry about being tired for a long trip to the Eastern College Athletic Conference Diving Championships held at Blodgett this weekend.
Lawler took first place in both the 1- and 3-meter men’s competitions, while Crerar finished third in the 1m and second in the 3m on the women’s side. For his efforts Lawler was named the ECAC Diver of the Meet, as he bested divers from five other eastern colleges.
“I really wanted to get the Diver of the Year at the America East meet, so getting ECAC Diver of the Meet was exciting,” Lawler said.
On Friday, Lawler began his highly successful weekend in the 3m competition, an event he won at the recent America East Championships. After the morning preliminaries, Lawler found himself in second place with 297.4 points, 2.7 points behind Dylan Korn of Rider University. In the finals, Lawler improved from his earlier effort, registering a score 306.65 which gave him the victory by more than 19 points over Korn and by more than 25 points over the third-place finisher, Rider’s Chris Coles.
“Brian was very consistent and confident throughout the meet,” said BU diving coach Agnes Gerlach-Miller. “His entries into the water were very clean, which made a big difference in comparison to the other divers.”
Sunday, Lawler returned to action in the 1m competition and this time took the lead in the preliminaries, with a score of 299.65 points. Korn was once again Lawler’s closest competitor, with a preliminary score of 285.95. In the finals, Lawler greatly outpaced his competitors, tallying a final score of 304.75, as Korn finished in a distant second, with 271.8 points.
“In the prelims, the competition was much closer, but Brian pulled away in the finals because for some reason, he is a better finals diver,” Gerlach-Miller said.
“I was expecting to win the 3-meter, but I wasn’t as confident about winning the 1-[meter] and I just hoped for the best,” Lawler said. “[Korn] is a very good diver and my goal was to score a little higher than him on every dive. It motivated me to do well and it paid off.”
Crerar began her stint on Friday in the 1m event, in which she finished in third place, behind Melissa Mangona of Marist College and Amanda Burke of Rider.
“I was happy with my performance,” Crerar said. “It was my first time competing in that meet and it was interesting to compete against a few schools that are not in the America East Conference.”
On Saturday, the competition took a backseat to concerns about Rider’s Shannen Kahler, who smashed her head into the diving board on one of her dives. Kahler was taken to the hospital to get stitches and stayed overnight, but returned to New Jersey with the rest of her team, according to Rider’s athletic website.
Kahler may still compete in the upcoming NCAA Zone Championships at Rutgers University in March, which she previously qualified for.
Following Kahler’s injury, Crerar was tied with Mangona for second place with one dive left, but she was able to outscore Mangona by 1.45 points.
“It is always hard to focus on your own dives after you see a diver hit the board,” Crerar said. “Everyone was pretty shook up after it happened, but we all had to try not to let it affect our own performances.”
Prior to their strong showings at the ECAC championships, both Lawler and Crerar performed admirably at the America East Championships. Lawler took first in the 3m and third in the 1m, while Crerar was fourth in the 1m and third in the 3m. Gerlach-Miller hopes the two sophomore divers can use both their performances at ECAC and the America East meets to provide momentum for the NCAA Zone competition at Rutgers.
“Their performances at the America East meet were pretty good and at the ECAC meet they were much better,” Gerlach-Miller said. “Hopefully in two weeks at the NCAA Zones they will be even better, because they seem to be on an upswing.”
In last year’s NCAA Zone championships at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Lawler and Crerar both performed well. Lawler finished third in the platform event, 15th in 1m springboard final, and 13th in the 3m trials. Crerar also placed third in the platform, finishing a team-best eighth in the 3m final, and was 27th in the 1m trials.
“I am very excited about Zones and I hope I do well,” Lawler said. “It is an especially difficult meet because there are so many good divers.”
“Zones is the hardest meet of the year for me, because there are always a lot of talented divers all competing for a chance to dive at the NCAA championships,” Crerar said. “It will be exciting to see who will qualify to go to nationals.”