GENEVA, Ohio --- Alexa Gonczi became the 60^th NCAA champion in the history of Golden Eagle women's swimming & diving and three other Clarion divers earned All-America honors on Thursday, with Clarion enjoying an incredible night at the NCAA Division II Swimming & Diving Championships at the SPIRE Institute.
 
For Gonczi, it represented the culmination of years of coming close to reaching the finals in a diving event. The junior had earned All-America Honorable Mention honors in each of the last two years but had yet to reach the top-eight in a diving event. She put that to rest early on Thursday afternoon when she led the field of 21 athletes with a score of 482.45 after the preliminary round.
 
In the finals for the first time in her career, Gonczi put on an even better show with her final six dives. She finished with a score of 505.00 to claim the first NCAA championship of her career and the 60^th in the history of the women's swimming & diving program. It is now the third consecutive women's diving championship a Clarion diver has won, as teammate Luna Castellanos won both the 1-meter and 3-meter dives at last year's NCAA Championships.
 
Gonczi's title was the brightest light of the day, but was by no means the only highlight. The Clarion women put four total divers into the championship final, believed to be the first time in NCAA history that one women's team made up half of the finals lineup. Castellanos, the reigning Division II Women's Diver of the Year, earned her third All-American finish with a third-place mark of 471.75. Katie Madigan and Colleen Hudson – both making their first-ever trips to the national meet – took fifth and sixth respectively, with scores of 418.50 and 415.75.