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Women's Swimming and Diving 3.10.2021 John Stark

Comeback Story Sends Coleman to NCAA Zone Meet

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The athletic calendars across the country are filled with redemption stories, mainly from the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering the spring and fall competitive seasons in 2020.

But the redemption story for Towson University junior diver Christina Coleman isn't COVID-19 related. It's a tale of a comeback from injury.

During the 2019-20 season for the women's swimming and diving team, Coleman qualified for the NCAA Zone A Diving Meet, held that season in Morgantown, West Virginia from Sunday March 8 until Tuesday March 10.

The kicker? That was one of the last, if not THE last weekends of competition across the NCAA until late November 2020.

But Coleman wasn't present for that final competition of early 2020; A week earlier during practice, Coleman was working on a reverse 1.5 on the 1-meter, clipping the board and fracturing her thumb.

"It was a big disappointment," said Coleman of the injury. "I was super excited to head to West Virginia to compete and travel with (men's diver) Will Canny. I was more in shock at first with the injury, then came the pain."

Now, one year and an injury later, Coleman gets a chance to compete at the Zone A Diving Meet. To make this even more special, typically the NCAA takes 70 competitors for each Zone Diving Championship. This season? Just 35 women's divers make their way to the Greensboro Aquatics Center this week for the meet this weekend.

As the 2020-21 season was announced in December, Coleman didn't quite have the Zone Diving Championships on her radar. She and her teammates were excited to get any semblance of a season in, no matter how short.

"We had fall training and some days it felt like we were training a lot for a slim chance," said Coleman. "But once we found out that we were going to have an abbreviated season, it was all worth it, all that training early in the season, knowing that we would have a season."

The pressure slowly built for Coleman to qualify. With just three meets this season to hit that qualifying score of 280 on the 3-meter, the Acton, Massachusetts native needed to perform well at every meet. Coleman hit that qualifying mark in her final chance, the Duke Dog Diving Invitational, posting a 287.75 in the 3-meter preliminary round in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

While she qualified on the 3-meter board, Coleman will compete on the 1-meter board in Greensboro, which she feels is her stronger event. Coleman was close to hitting that qualifying mark of 265 as she dropped a 262.49 on Feb. 13 in a meet at Loyola.

Coleman has had a long time to perfect her six-dive routine in the last two seasons; she's used pretty much the same lineup for two years. Her favorite dive in that routine? An inward 1.5 pike on the 1-meter board.

Until this week, it hadn't really crossed Coleman's mind that she is one of the top female divers in Division I by qualifying for the Zone meet, with a berth to the NCAA Championships on the line.

"I'm super excited to be given the opportunity to compete at such a high-level meet, especially this year with everything going on with COVD," said Coleman of the earned opportunity. "I can't wait to travel to Greensboro with (diving coach) Ben Herboth to represent my team, which has been there with me through it all this year. I wouldn't have been able to get to this point without Ben or my fellow diving teammates."

And you've got to hand it to Coleman, the resiliency to bounce back from that kind of injury and re-earn that level of opportunity speaks volumes.

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Players Mentioned

Christina Coleman: Diving; Junior; Exercise Science

Players Mentioned

Christina Coleman
: Junior; Exercise Science
: Diving