Kate Hauser wanted 11 dives she could be proud of on Friday night.
The senior diver for Marshalltown swimming and diving focused on herself, and ended the night on the podium with a fourth-place finish at the state diving meet held at the Marshalltown YMCA-YWCA.
“I was definitely nervous, but I’ve been practicing really well,” Hauser said. “I didn’t focus on what any other person was doing and just executed my dives.”
Hauser scored a 417.95 for her final high school diving meet. Grinnell’s Camryn Russell won with a 488.25, edging out Iowa City West’s Kamila Swanson’s 486.90 score on the final dive of the meet. Southeast Polk’s Holli Hetzer was third at 449.75.
It was a tight race for the final few spots on the podium, with several divers around the top-six cutoff with one dive to go, including Hauser sitting at sixth.
But Hauser set herself apart from that competition, scoring 46 points on her final dive of the night, a back somersault with 1 ½ twists, to comfortably secure a top-four finish.
“She was just really solid all the way through, and didn’t have a single bad dive tonight,” MHS head coach Angie Nelson said. “She wasn’t super confident in warm-ups, but I think the light went on when the meet started and she knew this was her chance to shine.”
Hauser was 26th as a sophomore, 19th as a junior, and now rocketed into the top four in the state this fall.
“It honestly felt amazing. I’m very happy with how tonight went,” Hauser said.
And now, her time as a Bobcat comes to an end. While she’s considering looking into options for continuing to dive competitively at the collegiate level, Friday night was a bittersweet moment for Hauser.
“I’m happy to be done with it, but I’m a little bit sad, too,” Hauser said. “This has probably been the best experience of my life. I’m so thankful for this opportunity. Like I’m very, very thankful, and so glad that I could meet so many new people and continue flipping outside of gymnastics.”
When it was over, she got to share a hug with Abby Tollefson, her former diving teammate, the 2023 state diving champ who now dives at Iowa State University — and someone who grew up with Hauser in those early days of gymnastics.
“That felt so nice,” Hauser said. “It felt familiar. It was great to have her around me.”
The diving competition was the final event of a full day at the Marshalltown Y that started with swimming preliminaries in the morning.
Leia Hernandez was the closest Bobcat to advancing to Saturday’s finals, finishing 20th in the 50 freestyle prelims in 25.32 with the cutoff at 25.16.
Hernandez will compete in the 200 and 400 freestyle relays on Saturday, with action beginning at noon in the Linda Bloom Natatorium.
“She took one little extra breath there that’s probably going to haunt her for six or seven months, but I’ll tell you what — the girl’s a fighter,” Nelson said. “She’s gonna get right back up in that pool tomorrow and knock someone’s socks off.”
The other two prelim swimmers were freshmen that accomplished the goal of moving up from their seeding; Emma Case was 30th in the 100 butterfly in 1:03.35 after being seeded 32nd; Adele Beek was also seeded dead last in the 100 breaststroke and climbed to 29th with a 1:11.21 prelim time.
Case and Beek will also compete on Saturday — Case and Beek are in the 200 medley relay; Beek is part of the 200 free relay team and Case is on the 400 freestyle relay to close out Saturday’s meet.
“The goal was to move up places, and both of them were able to do that,” Nelson said. “That’s great because today was a high pressure situation and they were really solid on their starts, good through the turns. They were longshots to make it so I think the girls did about as good as they could do. It was awesome.”
Saturday’s heat sheet
(MHS competitors)
200 medley relay — Heat 1, Lane 6 — Emma Case, Adele Beek, Maisie Gummert, Rachel Case
200 freestyle relay — Heat 2, Lane 1 — Leia Hernandez, Libby Meyer, Adele Beek, Rachel Case
400 freestyle relay — Heat 1, Lane 5 — Maisie Gummert, Drea Ceren, Emma Case, Leia Hernandez