The District 11 Diving Championships had both exhilaration and disappointment for Emmaus divers.

On the girls side, freshman Jess Hurlburt captured first place and a spot in the PIAA Championships, which will be held next month at Bucknell University. On the boys side, Andrew Vanim made it look like Emmaus would have another champion, but struggles over his final three dives dropped him from first place to third, leaving him just short of a place at states.

Hurlburt set a team and pool record for an 11-dive meet with a final score of 509.30, which is also the new standard for girls Class AAA diving in District 11. The pool record was actually topped by Central Catholic's Nicole Sagl, who bested Hurlburt's score with a mark of 511.10 in the meet, winning the AA classification and setting the district record.

The scoring was aided slightly by a change in judging the difficulty of dives. The National Federation of High Schools changed their difficulty range for dives to bring them in line with those of both the NCAA and USA Diving.

Hurlburt grabbed a quick lead through the first round of dives, but Easton's Kelsey Jehl passed her in round two and held the top spot through six dives. Hurlburt came up with a huge dive in round seven to retake the lead and held the lead going into the final three dives. At that point, the diving order was reshuffled according to scores, leaving Hurlburt to go last.

Through the previous rounds, she had been going before Jehl and Parkland's Kelsey German, her top competition. The change did add to the nervousness, but Hurlburt worked through the nerves.

"I felt kind of nervous because they were all looking so good and I knew that I had to do my best to keep up. It added some nerves watching everyone do so well," said Hurlburt, who said she had a good feeling coming into the meet, but wasn't quite sure what to expect.

For Vanim, the meet wrapped up a difficult week. He was sick during the week and was able to practice, but not as hard as he would have liked. While he admitted it was difficult to practice because of his illness, he refused to use that as an excuse as to why he faltered late in the meet.

"I think the nerves just got to me," he said. "It was just the pressure and all of that. It was just a really bad meet for me, to be honest. I wasn't hitting anything. I'm just very disappointed in myself, because I know I could have done a whole lot better."

Like Hurlburt, Vanim had to go after his closest competitors in the final three rounds because he was leading after eight dives. Also like Hurlburt, he had been going before the other top competitors, Parkland's Chris Lehman and Nazareth's Steven Stasolla, who finished first and second, respectively.

The top two finishers advance to the PIAA meet. Vanim had taken over the top spot after his second dive and was on top by 17 points when the diving order was reshuffled. Two of his final three dives resulted in scores of less than 30 points, opening the door for Lehman and Stasolla.

Even though he led for much of the meet, Vanim, a sophomore, wasn't happy with his performance throughout the day.

"I just was off on all of my dives," admitted Vanim. "I could have done a lot better on everything."