The Bobcats faced a tough 29-diver field full of high-level competitors — including last year’s state champion Jayna Misra from Ames and the 2017 third-place finisher Ashton Syharath from Cedar Falls — but seniors Alli and Sami Trowbridge stood toe to toe with the strong adversaries.

Alli placed sixth on the day with a score of 408.85 and Sami came in ninth with a 385.90. Hannah Taylor finished in 18th for Marshalltown with a 345.65 and Aaliyah Afuya placed 24th with a 259.30, and MHS head coach Angie Nelson said she was satisfied with how all of her girls performed.

“This meet for me and for these girls, it accomplished exactly what we needed,” Nelson said. “Everybody showed something that was good, all of our girls showed something fairly new they were doing today. If you take it one dive at a time and dissect it, none of them had anything that was terrible, everyone had something that was awesome and everyone had some things that would be pretty easy to fix. If we look at it that way and compartmentalize it, there’s a lot of awesome improvement that can happen in a short amount of time with the four girls we had diving today.”

Alli, who missed her season-high by 18 points, said she wasn’t completely thrilled with her showing but she will take sixth place considering the competition.

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON - Marshalltown senior Alli Trowbridge performs a back dive to start her list on Saturday in the Bobcat Diving Invite at the Linda Bloom Natatorium in Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA. Trowbridge finished sixth.

“I thought I did OK today, I can definitely improve my score and all my dives for regionals and our conference meet on Monday,” she said. “I need to work on some of my higher difficulty dives and improving those dives. I also want to break the school record, so I am really working for that too.”

Alli had the honor of starting the meet off as the first diver, meaning she was the first to start after every break as well, and Nelson said that’s a tough position to be in at times.

“If you look at dive-by-dive, Alli started out with a pretty rocking back dive. It’s always hard to be the first diver with the first dive because scoring is generally just a hair tight at the beginning of a meet,” Nelson said. “She competed for the first time ever with a forward two-and-a-half today in tuck, that was the last dive on her list. She completed it and the scores weren’t bad, I think for her that was a confidence booster. Her bottom three are a little scarier dives, but we will throw them a little more in practice and get some more time on them in the next couple weeks so those might move up the list a little bit.”

Sami was neck-and-neck with her twin sister until the last stretch of dives, when she fell behind the pack a bit.

“Sami had a really good meet going but then I think she lost a little bit of focus on a simpler dive,” Nelson said. “She will be her own worst critic on that, but there were a lot of good things. She is cleaning up her reverse dive and for the first time we put it in a tuck position and she scored it and collected fives and sixes and sevens on it.”

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON

The meet took just under four hours to complete, with an extra break taking place to fix one of the diving boards before the fourth dive, and Nelson said it’s hard to maintain focus for that long.

“This diving meet stretches longer than any diving meet that they go through, at some point after a couple of hours and they’ve already been here for two hours for warm-ups, I think you just lose the general flow of what a meet should look like,” she said.

Even in those conditions, Afuya competed in her first 11-dive meet ever on Saturday, and Nelson said she did well to place where she did.

“If you are going to start at one this is the longest one we can do it at,” Nelson said with a smile.

Taylor didn’t quite match her season-best of 402.40, but like the other girls Nelson said she had some great moments.

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON

“Taylor doesn’t throw that back double very often, but her backs were pretty spot on today. Forwards we were just a hair far out pushed from the board, that’s something we are working in,” Nelson said. “We are going to continue to develop and continue to work on getting off the board a little higher. Those things are going to clean up pretty quickly for her, she is very talented and her control is getting better and better all the time.”

Misra was the winner with a 545.90 for the Little Cyclones, while Syharath took second for the Tigers with a 478.45.

Alli Trowbridge said facing off with girls like Misra, Syharath and even Taylor Hogan from Waterloo East, who placed third with a 469.35, brings the best out of her.

“It helps me so I can do better in practice and hopefully compete with them more later,” she said.

Nelson agreed with her senior, saying seeing how those top-level girls go about things is good for her squad.

“I think it’s really good when they get a chance to see other divers who are really competitive because they see just some of the sharpness and crispness that sometimes we have and sometimes we don’t have,” Nelson said. “It gives us a good perspective on where we are.”

And of course the girls get to experience the venue where the state meet will be held, some extremely valuable experience that Nelson said other meets just don’t provide.

“That’s big, that’s why we have so many girls come here and compete, because this is their only opportunity to come here and get on that board,” she said. “The whole atmosphere makes a huge difference, we will see some changes at the state meet this year with diving being on Saturday morning and not the normal Friday night, so it’s all going to be kind of new and different, but we look forward to seeing how those changes impact everything else.”

The Bobcats get one more chance to do some improving in the CIML Iowa Conference diving meet on Monday, then Nelson said it’s all about preparing for the regional meet.

“We do the same dive list on Monday at Southeast Polk, then we have about a week and a half to get some good work in,” she said.

The CIML Iowa diving meet on Monday in Pleasant Hill will start at 5 p.m.

Bobcat Diving Invite

At Marshalltown

1. Jayna Misra, Ames, 545.90

2. Ashton Syharath, Cedar Falls, 478.45

3. Taylor Hogan, Waterloo East, 469.35

4. Jocelyn Buss, Ames, 431.90

5. Anna Penning, CR Jefferson, 429.15

6. Alli Trowbridge, Marshalltown, 408.85

7. Lauren Kimball, Waterloo East, 406.95

8. Megan Norris, Linn-Mar, 392.10

9. Sami Trowbridge, Marshalltown, 385.90

10. Erica Peters, Ankeny, 382.60

11. Celeste Enyeart, Ames, 381.00

12. Austyn Goodale, IC West, 366.80

13. Blair Pladsen, Linn-Mar, 358.60

14. Gabby Kroeze, CR Jefferson, 355.45

15. Sammi Schaben, Ames, 354.95

16. Jenna Carney, Linn-Mar, 353.80

17. Makayla Hughanks, Bettendorf, 353.25

18. Hannah Taylor, Marshalltown, 345.65

19. Avery Markowski, Dowling, 341.30

20. Lauren Krsek, Linn-Mar, 318.45

21. Annika Braaten, Bettendorf, 292.60

22. Allison Szalay, Dowling, 289.55

23. Peyton Sands, Iowa City West, 289.05

24. Aaliyah Afuya, Marshalltown, 259.30

25. Ali Meier, Ankeny, 241.90

26. Marissa Goodale, IC West, 235.55

27. Evann Biedenbach, CR Jefferson, 233.00

28. Bella Trevitt, Iowa City West, 212.30

29. Kaylynne Snow, Ankeny, 205.05

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