March 22, 2006
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Notre Dame freshman Michael Bulfin (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla./St. Thomas Aquinas) will compete at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships this Thursday and Friday in the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center. He will compete in the one-meter competition on Thursday and then the three-meter on Friday. Prelims begin at 1:30 p.m. (ET) and finals are at 7:00 p.m. both days.
Bulfin is just the third student-athlete in program history to qualify for the NCAA meet, joining diver Bob Ebel (1975) and swimmer Tim Kegelman (2005). He will look to become the first Fighting Irish male athlete to score at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. The top eight divers from both the one-meter and three-meter preliminaries will advance to that evening’s finals.
The Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. native qualified for the NCAA meet by placing fourth off the three-meter board at the NCAA Zone C Diving Championships on March 10 in Columbus, Ohio.
Bulfin totaled 311.20 points in three-meter preliminaries at the Zone Championships to place ninth overall heading into the finals. He would go on to register 323.20 points from his six dives in the finals to have a grand total of 634.40 points on the day to place fourth. His position would hold up throughout the final two days of competition at the meet.
The fourth-place finish tied the program record for the best-ever finish at the Zone Championships off of any board and set the mark for the three-meter. Andy Maggio (2000-03) placed fourth in the one-meter competition in 2002.
The freshman also competed off the one-meter board at the Zone Championships and placed ninth. He did not participate in the platform competition.
Bulfin garnered all-BIG EAST honors off the one-meter board by placing third at the conference meet last month and his coach, Caiming Xie, was named the BIG EAST Men’s Diving Coach of the Year.
In the first-ever trip for a Notre Dame male athlete to the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships, Ebel placed 77th off the three-meter board in 1975. Last year, Kegelman qualified for the NCAA Championships and competed in the 100-yard and 200-yard butterfly along with the 200-yard IM. He placed 37th in the 200-fly and 39th in the 200-IM and was disqualified in the 100-fly.
Live results of the competition can be found at ncaasports.com.
Stay up-to-date on the Notre Dame men’s swimming and diving team by logging onto und.com or by calling the Notre Dame athletics hotline at (574) 631-3000.
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