Competitors suffer from illness, flu

The first two days of the Indiana Dive Off against Purdue at the Counsilman Billingsley Aquatic Center were marked by a morning collegiate competition and an afternoon open competition. But, for sophomore Marc Carlton, the results were the same as he won both sessions off of the one-meter Friday and both off of the three-meter Saturday.\n"Marc Carlton had a real good training semester -- much better than last year -- and he did some real nice things this weekend," head coach Dr. Jeff Huber said. "Marc's front three and a half pike really looked good on the three meter." \nCarlton won both one-meter competitions with a 292.40 score and a 306.35 score in the collegiate and open sessions respectively. Sophomore captain Adam Hazes placed second in the collegiate competition with a 286.05 score and third in the open competition with a 279.55 score. \nCarlton continued to lead the Hoosiers Saturday in the three-meter dives as he posted first place scores of 559.90 and 562.65 in the open and collegiate competitions respectively. Carlton also set a personal best in the preliminary round with 570.95 points. Freshman Alex Burns finished fourth in the three-meter collegiate competition (493.35) after setting a personal best of 502.25 points during the preliminary round. \n"As a whole, my performance was pretty good," Burns said. "I dove fairly well, better than I usually do. It was a pretty good meet and I was just able to stay relaxed and aggressive."\nThe Hoosiers also competed in the Three-meter Springboard Dive-Off, where Carlton finished in first (569.65) followed by Burns in second (526.95). Burns said he was able to hit his best dive of the weekend during the dive off, a front three and a half.\n"It was just a good dive," he said. "I set it up nicely and put it in clean."\nBut Carlton's streak of five straight event wins was put on hold Sunday, as he caught the flu and was unable to compete in 10-meter platform diving. \n"Unfortunately, two of the dives that stand out the most for him right now are two on the platform, which he couldn't throw," Huber said. "He's learned two difficult dives that are actually pretty good."\nHazes also had the flu and didn't compete and Burns, the lone remaining Hoosier competitor off the platform, dove in exhibition and tallied a 381.15 score. Huber said that there was no cause for concern. \n"It's nothing serious, Marc and Adam should be back in a couple days," he said. "We're fortunate that we're fairly healthy at this point. Some people got beat up on platforms, but it's a rough event. You hit the water at about 35 miles per hour and if you're not lined up just right, that surface tension really pops up. But, we don't have anything serious."\nHuber said that competing in a meet environment at the Dive-Off provided positive experience. \n"We got in a lot of diving and that will help us, just all of the repetition," Huber said. "So, just kind of rehearsing things and how they want to prepare mentally for competition is what we'll take from this meet. Right now, we're done working on the skills and drills and we're looking more to preparing mentally for the Big Tens in February. But we're still a ways away. Marc's doing good, but he's still about one dive away from being a Big Ten champion. So we've still got some work to do"