EVANSVILLE, Indiana— A national-leading nine Colorado Mesa University divers successfully emerged from the NCAA Division II Pre-Championship Qualification Meet, held Tuesday here at the Deaconess Aquatics Center.
 
The five Maverick women and four CMU men will now join their swimming counterparts in the official NCAA Division II Swimming  & Diving Championships, which got underway with the 800-yard freestyle relays on Tuesday night.
 
One diving event will be contested on each of the next four days— Wednesday through Sunday.
 
The Maverick men got out to a hot start in Tuesday's qualification meet as Ryan Campbell won the 1-meter competition with a score of 325.85 points from six optional dives.  Giani Benoit (285.00), David Roethlisberger (282.15) and Jax Juarros (280.10) all finished in the top seven of the 39-man field with fifth, sixth and seventh place finishes.

Thanks to finishing in the top nine, the pressure was off as they were all assured of qualification for the championship meet.
 
Benoit, a freshman in his national meet debut, then took sixth in the 3-meter qualification portion of the event with 288.35 points, to lead the Maverick contingent.  Roethlisberger was eighth with 281.50 points while Campbell took tenth with 272.95 points.
 
Campbell and Roethlisberger are both returning second team all-Americans while Juarros was able to qualify for the official championship for the first time.
 
The four Mavericks will be amongst the 18 men that will compete in the X-meter event on Wednesday and the 3-meter event on Friday.
 
Meanwhile, the women started on the 3-meter as three Mavs in Mimi Licht, Emma Lence and Kenya Meyer took eighth, ninth and tenth to ensure championship qualification as top-11 finishers.  Licht scored 238.05 points while Lence had 237.15 points to edge Meyer's total of 237.10 points on six dives.
 
In the second half, the women moved to the 1-meter board where Meyer took second out of 39 divers with 252.85 points while Lence was sixth with 235.15.  Licht took eighth with 231.90 points.
 
Because there were multiple divers who finished amongst the top 11 on both boards, there were nine remaining spots in the championship meet, handed out based on the finishes in each half of the competition on an alternating basis.
 
CMU's Talia Datilio and Jenna Hurley snagged two of those spots as Datilio finished 15^th on the 3-meter with 225.60 points while Hurley was 16^th on the 3-meter with 214.65 points and 17^th on the 1-meter with 211.90 points
 
Datilio also finished 20^th on the 1-meter with 200.70 points while
 
Meyer and Licht are returning first team all-Americans while Datilio was a second team honoree last year.  Hurley and Lence emerged from the qualification meet for the first time and will be amongst the 22 women who will compete in the 3-meter event on Thursday and on the 1-meter event on Saturday.
 
The Mavericks also had four other divers compete on Tuesday.
 
Freshman Asa Keim took 25^th on the 1-meter with 232.95 points and was 32^nd on the 3-meter with 217.70 points.  Ty Mitton placed 27^th on the 1-meter with 231.50 points before taking 19^th on the 3-meter with 250.30 points.  Aiden Coon was 25^th on the 3-meter with 240.75 points after taking 34^th on the 1-meter with 207.90 points.
 
Juarros took 27^th on the 3-meter with 235.00 points.
 
Juli Holt finished 26^th in both events with 192.50 points on the 1-meter and 192.15 on the 3-meter.
 
Diving preliminaries will begin at 1 p.m. CDT (Noon Mountain) in a 11-dive format each day with the consolation finals to determine the ninth through 16^th place finishers taking place 30 minutes following the conclusion of those finals.
 
The championship finals will be held during the evening session, which gets underway at 5:30 p.m. CDT (4:30 p.m. Mountain) each day.
 
Swimming preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. Mountain) each morning.
 
A live stream of all the action can be seen on NCAA.com and overall meet results can be found here.
 
The dive-by-dive results can also be found on DiveMeets.com.