They don’t get much attention during the regular season, but next week, the top three Syracuse divers will be the swimming and diving team’s biggest attraction.

Rick Rodriguez, Dwight Schultz and Anthony Campagna are competing in the Diving Zone Meet at the University of Buffalo during Spring Break to determine if they’ll qualify for the NCAA Championships.

This will be the first Zone Meet for Schultz and Campagna, both freshmen. Rodriguez, a junior who joined the team last year, competed in one event at last year’s meet.

The Diving Zone Meet, a regional qualifying competition, is one of many that will take place around the country to thin the herd before the NCAA Championships.

The northeast Zone Meet is usually held in a warmer climate, such as Annapolis, Md. The move to frigid upstate New York makes traveling easier for SU’s divers but also deprives them of a temperate Spring Break retreat.

About 30 divers from the Big East, Atlantic 10, Ivy League and a handful of other conferences will compete in Buffalo, and only four or five will move on to the NCAA Championships.

Sending three men and no women to this year’s Zone Meet is unusual. Diving coach Jeff Keck said he’s used to going with one diver from each team, but this year’s Orangemen have performed significantly better than the Orangewomen.

‘We’ve actually won the Zone Meet with women in the past,’ Keck said. ‘So this is a little different for us, to be much stronger on the men’s side than the women’s side. It’s a good cycle.’

Syracuse will compete in the 1-meter and 3-meter events but not the higher platform dives. Syracuse has no platform-diving facility, so the divers would have to travel to Buffalo or downstate New York just to practice.

‘We used to have a tower over at Webster with scaffolding that was put up when I was a diver here in the 1960s,’ Keck said. ‘But the pool really isn’t deep enough, so risk management said they should get rid of it.’

Syracuse will face intense competition from Pittsburgh, Penn State and several Ivy League schools, so Keck doesn’t expect his divers to qualify for the NCAA Championships. Still, the young divers will gain experience, regardless of the Zone Meet’s outcome.

‘The best kid doesn’t always win in this sport,’ Keck said. ‘The most consistent kid is usually the one that wins. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re going to try to be consistent.

‘If they could be in the top 20 or top 15, that would be phenomenal.’

Published on March 5, 2003 at 12:00 pm