Saturday saw two historic Mountaineer performances at the NCAA Championships and, with them, the end of the WVU Swimming & Diving season.
Sophomores Mia Cheatwood and Abigail Sullivan represented West Virginia in Athens, Ga. for the final day of the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships. Cheatwood competed in her second event of the week, the women’s 200-yard breaststroke, while Sullivan competed for the first time in women’s platform diving.
Though neither Mountaineer performed well enough to make the eight-person final round, both made WVU history, as Cheatwood nearly broke her own school record and Sullivan put the Mountaineers back on the map in women’s diving.
Mia Cheatwood, who competed in both the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke events during the week, made it to Athens thanks to dominant showings at Morgantown’s Big 12 Championships to start the month. Cheatwood placed fifth and third respectively in the 100 and 200 breaststroke and broke her own program records in doing so.
In the 200, Cheatwood entered the NCAA Championships with a seed time of 2:09.13 earned in the Big 12 Championship finals. In Saturday’s preliminary round, she nearly matched that, finishing the swim in 2:09.71, good enough for her career best prelim time and second-best time in WVU history.
Cheatwood finished 30th of 62 swimmers in the 200-yard breaststroke. The day prior, she set the program record in the 100 at 59.73 seconds and placed 28th out of 49.
For Abigail Sullivan, her mere presence at the NCAA Championships earned her a spot in the WVU history books. Since 1984, WVU has never had a women’s diver compete at the championship level, and, through her success in platform diving, Sullivan broke that streak.
Sullivan qualified for the weekend after an impressive showing at the Zone A Diving Championships in Princeton, N.J. from March 11 through March 13. She competed in all three events, the 1-meter, 3-meter, and platform.
Alongside WVU’s junior Sarah Krusinski and senior Sara Haggerty, Sullivan put on a show in the platform, scoring a two-round combined score of 465.45 to place fifth in Zone A and qualify for the NCAA Championships.
In her first appearance at that level, Sullivan finished 42nd of 43 divers with a respectable preliminary round score of 181.7. The score was a far cry from her personal best of 264.1, scored in the consolation finals of the Big 12 Championships this year, but with Sullivan’s current trajectory, there is no doubt that she can earn another chance in the coming years.
As the WVU Swimming & Diving season comes to a close, just one large event with Mountaineer representation remains. Senior Ivan Puskovitch represents WVU and the United States at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on August 8 and 9 as a marathon swimmer. He will be the fifth American and first Mountaineer to ever do so.
Photo from WVU Swimming & Diving
