Starks Leads Miami into Finals of the BIG EAST Championships Opening Day

Feb. 19, 2004

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Freshman Derek Starks (Mission Viejo, Calif.) earned the top-seed for tonight’s finals of the men’s 3-meter springboard with a dominating qualifying mark of 556.95 earlier today at the BIG EAST Swimming and Diving Championships at the Nassau County Aquatics Center in East Meadows, N.Y.

Starks will be joined by two-time All-American Emily Spychala (Tampa, Fla.) and freshman Heather Bounds (Austin, Texas) who will be competing in the finals of the women’s 1-meter springboard for the Hurricanes.

Spychala earned a spot in the finals with a score of 264.50 while Bounds qualified with a mark of 201.15.

The Hurricanes will send two swimmers into tonight’s consolation finals with freshman Tara Erwin (Ewing, N.J.) touching in with a personal-best time of 5:00.89 in the 500-yard freestyle, good for 14th place and junior Katalin Ferenczi (Pa’ Pa, Hungary) finishing 15th in the 200 IM with a season-best time of 2:05.96,

Miami’s Adrien Ferguson missed the consolation final cut by .06 seconds with a time of 2:06.07 to finish 17th in the 200 IM and freshman Lindsey Fox turned a time of 24.54 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle to finish 33rd.

The finals of the opening day of the BIG EAST Championships are slated to begin at 6 p.m. Thursday night.