INDIANAPOLIS— Colorado Mesa University sophomore diver Ammar Hassan won his third career NCAA Division II National Championship in as many efforts and led the Maverick men's swimming & diving team to eight all-America performances and a fourth place team standing after Wednesday, the first of four days of competition here at the IU Natatorium.
 
Hassan was one of three Mavericks in the top nine in the 3-meter event as CMU scored 44 of their 63 opening-day points in that discipline.
 
The 6^th of October, Egyptian scored 593.10 points to win by 30.20 over Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rival Otto Lehtonen of Oklahoma Baptist.  Hassan's total is the third highest total in meet history since 1971, but a bit shy of his meet-record 624.80 points set last year.
 
Meanwhile, junior teammate Noah Macomber took fourth with 531.30 points to earn his fifth career and third first team all-America honor.  CMU sophomore Chandler Livingston finished ninth in the preliminaries with 434.75 points to earn second team all-America honors in his first NCAA Championship effort.
 
Meanwhile, the Mavericks also had some strong swimming efforts.  Freshman Arthur Cury won the consolation final in the 200-yard individual medley to finish ninth overall with a school-record time of 1 minute, 47.23 seconds.  He had also set a school-record time of 1:47.43 in the morning preliminary session going under his former record and RMAC Championship winning time of 1:48.39.
 
The men's 200 medley relay team of Lane Austin, Mahmoud Elgayar, Morgan Bean and Zander Minano then capped the night with a 12^th place finish in 1:28.28, just off the Maverick record of 1:28.13, set more than three years ago.   Bean, a senior is now a 2-time second team relay all-American.  The other three Mavs, all freshmen, earned their first honors.  They had also finished 12^th in the preliminaries with a time of 1:29.02.
 
In the morning preliminary session, Minano finished in a tie for 20^th in the 50 free prelims with a time of 20.36 seconds while Torsten Rau ended up 28^th in the 1000 free with a time of 9:34.74.
 
The Mavericks also had two women compete in the morning swimming events.  Sierra Forbord finished 19^th in the 50 free with a time of 23.42, just off her school-record and seed time of 23.37.
 
Senior Danielle Jefferies took 23^rd in her national championship debut.  She touched in the 200 IM with a time of 2:04.72.