University of Tennessee Athletics
LADY VOL DIVERS PREPARE TO HOST HOUSTON IN WEEKEND CONTEST
November 07, 2001 | Women's Swimming & Diving
Nov. 7, 2001
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
In a small meet filled with champions, the University of Tennessee women's diving team will take on the University of Houston divers on Friday and Saturday at the Tennessee Student Aquatic Center. Friday's action will begin at 5 p.m. with the one-meter competition consisting of six dives, while Saturday's three-meter competition will include 11 dives and is slated for a 10:30 a.m. start.
One of the top contests of the 2001-02 season for the Lady Vol divers will be one of the smallest as only seven women will be competing. Among those women, though, are a former Olympian and world champion and a pair of reigning Senior National champions.
Tennessee boasts a pair of current Senior National champs. Junior Jaime Sanger (Plymouth, Minn.), an All-American on the one- and three-meter springboards last year, won the one-meter Senior title during the summer meet after finishing third in that event at the NCAA Championships. Freshman Lauryn McCalley scored her second consecutive Senior three-meter title over the summer and is an eight-time Junior Olympic gold medallist. Sophomore Kylee Wells, an All-American on the platform in 2001, and junior Stacy Binyon will also take to the boards for Tennessee.
Most of the top competition for the Lady Vols will come from Houston sophomore Yulia Pakhalina of Moscow, Russia. She was the 2001 NCAA Diver of the Year and won both of the springboard events at the NCAA Championships. Representing her home country of Russia, she won the 1998 World Championship on the three-meter and finished third at this year's World Championships in Fukioka, Japan. Adding to her impressive credentials, Pakhalina was a gold medallist in three-meter synchronized diving at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. UH will also bring Azul Amazan (Mexico City, Mexico), Lindsay Harvey (Houston, Texas) and Veronica Smith (Houston, Texas) to compete in Knoxville.
The coaches going head-to-head over the weekend are also familiar foes. Tennessee diving coach Dave Parrington is a 1983 Houston graduate and former diving coach at his alma mater where he coached current Cougar mentor Jane Figueiredo. Figueiredo, the 2001 NCAA Women's Diving Coach of the Year, was an All-American for three years under Parrington and the three-meter champion at the Southwest Conference meet. She was also a 1984 Olympian and Parrington's assistant to Houston's age-group diving teams prior to his departure in 1990. Both Parrington and Figueiredo are natives of Zimbabwe, where Parrington's mother taught his current foe how to swim.
