Standing on the highest spot on the podium was Alexa Gonczi and joining her in just her first appearance at nationals was 2022 Warren graduate Katie Madigan.

The sophomore Madigan took fifth place after achieving a score of 418.50. For the Lady Dragons, Madigan was a two-time first team all-state selection, three-time all-region selection with two being on the first team, and she holds the school record in the six-dive and 11-dive events at 1 meter.

Alexa Gonczi became the 60th NCAA champion in the history of Golden Eagle women’s swimming & diving and was joined by three other Clarion divers earning All-America honors.

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 this 2022 file photo, 2022 Warren graduate Katie Madigan tucks during a diving. On Thursday, the now Clarion University sophomore, Madigan, finished in fifth in the 3-meter dive at the NCAA Division II Swimming & Diving Championships at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio. Times Observer File Photo

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 60th 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. 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.