NCAA Women’s Championships: Sophie Verzyl Delivers Late for 3-Meter Gold
Thursday night at Georgia Tech, Chiara Pellacani waited on the deck and watched – or didn’t watch – as Sophie Verzyl dove last with a chance to pass her for the NCAA title on 1-meter.
Friday, the roles were reversed on 3-meter, much to the South Carolina senior’s delight. And with her eyes wide open.
Verzyl’s final dive pushed her into the lead, a score of 387.90 points withstanding two late chances to pass her and earning her first NCAA title on 3-meter. She had come up .25 points shy on 1-meter a night earlier.
Desharne Bent-Ashmeil of Tennessee finished second with a score of 382.25. Minnesota’s Elna Widerstrom was third, with Pellacani, the reigning silver medalist and first out of prelims, fourth.
Verzyl opted to watch those final dives that threatened to separate her and a gold medal, confident in the work she’d done.
“I was excited to see how it was going to go,” she said. “I had known I’d done all that I could have at that point. I was done. So I did watch because I was just excited. It’s a diving meet, so I wanted to see how it played out.”
Verzyl was 11th in this event last year and 24th in 2023 as a sophomore, before an Olympic redshirt.
The second-place finish 24 hours earlier was something Verzyl used as a positive.
“One thing that hit me really soon after it happened while I was on deck yesterday, is that I’m the same person I am today whether I got first or second,” she said. “A championship doesn’t change who I am as a person or an athlete, so I didn’t let it get me down. I’ve been working on not putting so much pressure on and idolizing and putting on a pedestal this one meet. So I think watering it down, saying that this is just another meet, helped me compartmentalize. I reset the goal at midnight, got here today, and it was like, let’s just get business done again.”
Verzyl was in third place after prelims and in first after the first three of six dives in finals. In the fourth round, she dropped two spots to third, Widerstrom taking the lead. Bent-Ashmeil went to the front on the fifth dive. But Verzyl scored 78.20 points on her 5154B to vault from second to first on her sixth and final attempt.
Diving third to last, Verzyl set her total at 378.90. Bent-Ashmeil, the English-born freshman at her first NCAAs, went next and got close, her 5152B earning 67.5 points to 382.25. Pellacani came next, and her 5152B, after a brief delay to build dramatic tension, was worth 67.5.
Widerstrom’s final dive, the popular 5152B, yielded 70.5 points, second only to Verzyl in the round.
Kansas’s Shiyun Lai was up a spot from last year in fifth, 0.3 points up on Texas’s Bayleigh Cranford, who also improved a spot from last year. Ohio State’s Lena Hentschel was seventh, with Maria Sanchez-Moreno of Arkansas eighth.
Verzyl’s realization in the silver-medal position Thursday changed what she chose to emphasize on the top step of the podium a day later. It’s the end of her college career, though she plans to keep on training post-grad. Winning a long-sought NCAA title is obviously precious. But there’s more to the pathway there that made her smile Friday.
“It’s so cliche, but it’s all about the journey,” she said. “I really think every single opportunity that you have to learn something in a competition is very valuable. And so, of course, I’m really happy for this win. It’s great to have on my diving resume, but it doesn’t make or break it, and neither does any other meet, because it’s all about who you become during the process.”
Event 12 Women 3 mtr Diving
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NCAA: N 437.75 3/20/2009 Christina Loukas, Indiana
Meet: M 437.75 3/20/2009 Christina Loukas, Indiana
Name Year School Prelims Finals Points
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=== Championship Final ===
1 Verzyl, Sophie SR South Carolina 356.25 387.90 20
2 Bent-Ashmeil, Desharn FR Tennessee 368.40 382.25 17
3 Widerstrom, Elna JR Minnesota 333.65 374.35 16
4 Pellacani, Chiara SR Miami (FL) 371.10 372.90 15
5 Lai, Shiyun JR Kansas 334.05 342.35 14
6 Cranford, Bayleigh JR Texas 330.35 342.05 13
7 Hentschel, Lena SR OSU 334.65 337.30 12
8 Sanchez-Moreno, Maria SO Arkansas 328.85 320.85 11
