March 9, 2006

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The University of Houston diving team hope to take a step closer towards the 2006 NCAA Championships this weekend as it competes at the NCAA Zone D Meet.

The three-day meet begins at 10 a.m., Friday with the 1-meter competition, continues at 1 p.m., Saturday with the 3-meter event and wraps up at 10 a.m., Sunday with the platform at the Mizzou Aquatics Center.

Five UH divers - senior captain Stephanie Mannella, juniors Rachel Gitelson and Anna Kiess, redshirt freshman Anastasia Pozdniakova and freshman Tania Cagnotto - will attempt to qualify from Zone D to compete at the 2006 NCAA Championships. That meet is scheduled to be hosted by Purdue on March 16-18 in West Lafayette, Ind.

In this year's NCAA Zone D meet, there will be six openings up for grabs on the women's side.

Under the leadership of head coach Jane Figueiredo, the Cougar diving corps ranked among the nation's best all season. Figueiredo, who was named the Conference USA Diving Coach of the Year for the fifth consecutive season, has made a career of guiding her young protégés to the postseason, sending 19 student-athletes to the NCAA Championships during her 16-year career at UH.

Cagnotto leads the way for the Cougars after winning Diver of the Meet honors during the Conference USA Women's Swimming and Diving Championship and Men's Invitational at UH's own Campus Recreation & Wellness Center Natatorium on Feb. 22-25.

Cagnotto, a native of Bolzano, Italy, won the individual championships in all three diving events, joining former Cougar and five-time NCAA individual national champion Yulia Pakhalina as the only league divers to accomplish that feat.

She was a steady performer throughout the 2005-06 season, winning nine C-USA Diver of the Week honors to set a new UH single-season record.

Pozdniakova was equally impressive at the C-USA Championship, finishing second in all three diving events. The Elektrostal, Russia, native also earned a pair of C-USA Diver of the Week awards during her first season of collegiate competition.

Kiess, who earned two C-USA Diver of the Week honors during the regular season, finished second on the platform and third on the 1-meter springboard during the recent C-USA Championship. Her success on the platform was no surprise, though, after she finished as the NCAA national runner-up in that event a year ago.

Gitelson has competed at the NCAA Zone Diving meet in each of her first two seasons and earned All-America honors on the platform a year ago at the NCAA Championships.

Mannella also is scheduled to compete at the NCAA Zone meet after recording new career highs on both the 1-meter and 3-meter springboards at that meet a year ago.