Hoosier holds her own

Just a few months removed from her IU graduation, former Hoosier women's swimming and diving star Sara Hildebrand had an impressive weekend at the FINA World Diving Championships this weekend. The former Olympian finished in sixth place in the 3-meter springboard event and placed third in the 3-meter synchronized event preliminaries with IU junior Cassandra Cardinell.\nThe results for the 3-meter synchronized final were not posted at press time.\nIn the springboard event, Hildebrand took fourth out of a field of 43 in the preliminaries and eighth in the semifinals and finished with a 545.55 score, placing her at sixth in the competition and nearly 30 points ahead of her nearest competitor. \n"I'm so proud of my diving tonight," Hildebrand said in a press release. "One of my big goals was to have patient, relaxed hurdles, and all three of them were right there. It was a tough competition. I started out 20 points behind, and in a competition so tight, there's not a lot of room to move up."\nWhile a sixth-place finish might not be spectacular to the untrained eye, Hildebrand's competition featured more than 20 former Olympians, including three gold medalists, one silver medalist and two World Championship winners. Two of the former gold medalists, Julia Pakhalina and Vera Ilyina, were teammates in the 3-meter synchronized event when they took the gold medal at the 2000 Olympics. \nHildebrand's success did not stop on her own accord as she teamed up with Cardinell in the women's 3-meter synchronized event. The duo finished third out of a field of 16 in the preliminaries with a 283.26 score, barely beating out the fourth-place finishers by just over one point. \nSuccess is nothing new to Hildebrand, as she also won the All-Around Award for the highest point total at the 2003 Speedo National Diving Championships that took place in June and also participated in the 2000 Olympics.\nHildebrand and Cardinell aren't the only Hoosiers at the event as IU head diving coach Dr. Jeff Huber was one of two coaches leading the American divers at the event.