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Murrieta's Cooper wins diving title

By: Staff reports | Tuesday, May 11, 2004 9:47 PM PDT ∞

CLAREMONT ---- Wherever Kelly Cooper placed in Tuesday's CIF-Southern Section Division III Diving Championships, this much was certain: The scoreboard was going to play a diminished role.

"Normally, I'm pretty glued to it," the Murrieta Valley junior said. "But I didn't look until after the eighth round. After I looked then, I knew I kind of had it."

And, for the first time in three tries, she did "have" it. Cooper's score of 412.45 points outdistanced second-place Carmen Stellar of Pasadena Mayfield by more than 40 as Cooper won her first CIF-SS diving championship at Claremont McKenna College.

Cooper wasn't the only Valley competitor; Chaparral's Carrie Koscielak placed sixth with 264 points.

The victory was relieving to Cooper after finishing second the last two years. But there was also a tinge of the bittersweet ---- Cooper would have dearly loved to have beaten Huntington Beach Brethren Christian's Lindsey Stevens, who edged Cooper by about 10 points the last two years for titles.

Stevens now dives for Pepperdine.

"I was happy with it," Cooper said. "I would have liked to compete against Lindsey and beaten her, but I was happy with it."

Cooper said her best dive came in the second round on a backward-pike dive.

"I got nines on it," she said. "It was the highest-scoring (dive) of the meet."

Cooper is the Nighthawks' lone diving competitor, coached at the high school level by her mother, Tracey. She has been diving competitively for nine years with the Laguna Niguel-based Crown Valley Divers club.

Consistency, she said, has been her strength, and it was again Tuesday.

"I pulled everything together to make a really nice, solid meet," she said.

In high school diving, divers compete for 11 rounds. Highest and lowest scores are thrown out and multiplied by degree of difficulty.

Cooper saved her toughest dives for the end Tuesday ---- a degree of difficult of 2.4 ---- even when she knew she was protecting a lead.

"My last three dives were the three highest," she said. "But there also some of my most confident dives ---- dives that I consistently nail."

Correspondent Pete Marshall and staff writer Landon Negri contributed to this report.