Senior Illinois State diver Krystal Featherston has been selected as the Missouri Valley Conference Diver of the Year for placing first on both one- meter (2:54.25) and three-meter (4:57.85) boards at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships held this weekend at Southern Illinois. This is Featherstons third consecutive Valley Diver Award of her collegiate career.
The Redbirds finished third in the championships with 768.50 following second place Southern Illinois (849) and first place SMS (913).
Head diving coach Carly Weiden expected nothing less then the best from Featherston since the start of the season.
Krystal has worked hard throughout the year, said Weiden. It is nice to see her hard work has paid off. Overall all the athletes performed extremely well on both boards and I was very impressed with the intensity they held throughout this weekend.
Coach Weiden also received the honor for the second consecutive year of MVC Diving Coach of the Year.
In the 1650-yard freestyle, Christine Steinbach produced a solid seventh place finish for the Redbirds at 17.49.16. Her teammate Jenny Klicka finished eighth in the same event with 17.53.77. Julie Cocks (2:08.29) and Emily Richardson (2:09.05) had solid performances placing fourth and fifth consecutively in the 200-yard backstroke, shaving time from their preliminary round this morning.
In the 100-yard freestyle, Monique Witkowski achieved a personal best time of 53.16. Katie Finan and Tracey Deyell had fourth and fifth finishes in the 200-yard breastroke. Finan had a personal best time of 2:08.17, leaving her previous best time of 2:12.00 behind. Deyell took one for the team and swam the breastroke in a back to back event with very little resting time and placed fifth at 2:09.67.
Kyle Pullman, Valerie Zaleski, Steinbach and Witkowski marked a season best swim in the 400-yard medley relay coming in third at 3:34.07. Jaime Haseman had a personal best time in the preliminary round earlier that day in the 200-yard butterfly coming in at 2:17.39.
Head swimming and diving coach
Steve Paska could not have been more pleased with todays results.
The athletes swam hard all weekend, said Paska. Everything clicked for us. SMS had a very strong team and overall I am very impressed with how we swam and dove this weekend.
Redbirds making the Missouri All-Conference team included Featherston, Alison Kouba, Finan, Brittany Armstrong and Deyell. For the MVC Scholar-Athlete team was Klicka, Featherston, Finan, Armstrong and Kouba.
The Redbird divers finish off the end of the season when they travel to Lafayette, Ind. to participate in the NCAA Diving Regionals on Fri. March 11 at Purdue.
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NOTE: For a list of full results, please visit the Southern Saluki website at: http://siusalukis.collegesports.com/sports/c-swim/spec-rel/021505aab.html
