Senior diver Sam Dorman capped off his five-year career by breaking the NCAA 3-meter springboard diving record with 529.10 points in his final competition as a Hurricane.
The achievement took place at the NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships in Iowa City, Iowa on Friday night.
Dorman ran away with the contest tallying at least 80 points on each of his first five dives. A forward four-and-a-half somersault tuck on his fifth dive earned Dorman 102.6 points and left him just 43 points away from the meet record set in the preliminaries earlier in the day by Indiana freshman James Connor, who finished fourth in the finals.
“I was in the zone,” Dorman said. “I did all my dives in warm-ups and I just tried to stay in the same zone.”
Dorman pulled off a reverse one-and-a-half somersault with three-and-a-half twists for his final dive for 75 points, breaking the previous record by more than 30 points.
“He’s always had the ability but he’s been extremely inconsistent,” Hurricanes diving coach Randy Ableman said. “This is really sweet redemption for a lot of hard work and a lot of rough times and disappointments. To finally come through in his last event as a senior … And he won because he was the most consistent.”
The win was especially joyful for Ableman who was a four-time All-America diver and NCAA champion at Iowa. “When they put the NCAAs here I was like, ‘Oh wow, you’re kidding,’” Ableman said.
Dorman finished ahead of 2014 champion Michael Hixon of Indiana and 2013 champion Kristian Ipsen of Stanford, who placed second and third, respectively.