Searle, Alcorn second at Dive Invitational

Joe Naiman

Village News Reporter

Two Fallbrook High School freshmen placed second at the Dive Invitational meet April 9 at the Fallbrook High School pool.

Olivia Searle was second in the girls six-dive competition. Felix Alcorn took second in the boys six-dive event.

The four divisions had a total of 30 divers. “To have that many divers, it was good,” said meet organizer Sean Redmond, who is also Fallbrook High School’s diving coach.

Redmond noted that April 9 was during Spring Break for many schools. “That was actually the beginning of our Spring Break,” he said.

Fallbrook still had eight divers there. “We had actually quite a few Fallbrook divers in the meet,” Redmond said.

Five judges provide scores for each dive. The highest score and the lowest score were discarded, and the three middle scores were added together and then multiplied by the dive's degree of difficulty to determine the score for each dive.

Lauren Forbes of San Marcos High School won the girls six-dive class with 154.80 points. Searle had a total of 130.95 points. Fallbrook freshman Lucia Mochel had the fourth-place score of 128.45 points, sophomore Ava Papoulias was sixth with 113.55 points, and junior Victoria McBride obtained 105.30 points for seventh place.

Because a higher degree of difficulty allows for a higher score, many divers use the invitationals to test new dives. They don’t necessarily master those dives initially, so their scores are often lower than many of their previous scores.

“They were trying new dives,” Redmond said.

The CIF diving meet will take place May 6 at Granite Hills High School. “We’ve got a couple of weeks to get them ready,” Redmond said.

Timothy Hansen of Canyon Crest had a score of 151.30 points to top the boys dive competitors. Alcorn accumulated 125.10 points. Fallbrook sophomore Jamison Ewig had the third-place total of 96.90 points.

Keira Kuderka of Carlsbad won the girls 11-dive competition with 342.15 points. The only Fallbrook diver in that class, junior Payton Wilson, took seventh place with a score of 235.45 points.

No Fallbrook divers competed in the boys 11-dive event. Connor Liddle of Poway won that division with 347.50 points.