Divers hoping extra week of preparation pays off with gold

Tri-State Sports & News Service

When Jonah Cagley made his PIAA Class 3A diving championships debut last year, he had the entire Fox Chapel swimming team there to provide support.

This year the reigning WPIAL champion will be on his own. And he’s all right with that.

“I think that might help me a little bit because I think I can stay more focused,” Cagley said. “I’ll be able to go up there and do it without other distractions and I can focus on my diving more.”

Because of a snowstorm that impacted the central and eastern parts of the state early last week, the PIAA was forced to alter its usual schedule for the state swimming and diving meet at Bucknell University’s Kinney Natatorium. The swimming portion began one day later and ran from Thursday through Sunday rather than Wednesday to Saturday, timed finals were used instead of morning preliminary rounds and evening championship heats and diving was moved completely out of the program and rescheduled for this weekend with Class 2A on Saturday and Class 3A on Sunday.

“I would say it helps me because it’s just an extra week of training and an extra week to practice all your dives,” Cagley said. “I just want to do what I did at WPIAL and hit all my dives.”

Cagley became the first sophomore to win the WPIAL 3A championship since 2009 when North Allegheny’s Connor Kuremsky won the second of his four titles. Though he won’t be a part of the Fox Chapel contingent, it won’t be a completely unfamiliar position.

“I’m going to be there with a lot of other divers that aren’t on my high school team, but we’re all on the same USA Diving team,” Cagley said. “We all train together at Pitt and we’re all teammates there, so it’s just going to be like every other meet.”

Because he’s used to competing regionally, he understands what he has to do to prepare for a meet of this nature, he’ll also know what he has to overcome. He is heading in with a qualifying score of 525.20, which places him fifth, 34.55 points behind North Penn senior Bryce Hoch.

“I just do the same thing I do for every other big meet,” Cagley said. “I do my list of all the dives I’m doing a couple weeks in advance and, a couple days before, I wouldn’t say cram, but just do my list more than I usually would.”

Class 3A

Mars senior Taylor Hockenberry is a two-time reigning state champion, but she isn’t the top seed heading into the PIAA finals and isn’t considered a prohibitive favorite.

One of the reasons is that Hockenberry won her two titles in Class 2A. Because of the state’s biennial realignment, Mars was moved up to Class 3A where she will compete Sunday.

Hockenberry, a North Carolina recruit, will be seeded third when the competition begins at 1:45 p.m. Sunday. Her WPIAL championship score of 505.90 puts her behind North Penn sophomore Paige Burrell, who finished second last year behind graduated teammate Marie Yacopino, and Pennsburg senior Nicole Costello, the fifth-place finisher in 2016.

Class 2A

No WPIAL boys diver has won a state title since 2008 when Justin Duncan of South Park took home the title. It hasn’t been easy for the WPIAL girls in this classification, either, as McKenzie Stelter of Mohawk was the last to take the state crown in 2013 and, before that, it was Kayla Kelosky of Riverside in 2007.

This year won’t be a picnic either.

Trevor Mahoney of South Fayette is the highest seeded WPIAL boys diver in the field he’s rated ninth heading into Saturday’s finals, while Ava Talorico of Beaver is seeded eighth.