“I mean, we did want to qualify,” Rybalko said. “We all did really well this season and we all had a good chance to qualify, but despite the fact that we didn’t qualify we still had a good meet.”

Sanders took fifth in the preliminaries to qualify him for the finals later in the day.

His cumulative score of 549.05 was good for a seventh-place finish overall.

“I could have dove a bit better,” Sanders said. “A lot of diving is just going to these meets and getting exposure to the other coaches because the coaches are going to be the ones who are going to decide your score. So I went out there as a freshman and I showed them who I am.”

In the three-meter event, Sanders and Rybalko started out the day strong with seventh- and eighth-place finishes in the preliminaries to qualify them for the finals. But they were not able to move up in the finals, with both receiving overall scores of 488.10 to solidify their seventh- and eighth-place finishes in the event.

Even though Harvard walked away with no NCAA qualifying divers, the Crimson divers were able to walk away happy.

“[Papadakis] and I got together at the beginning of the meet and decided that we can go into this meet and be worried about qualifying and diving so well,” Sanders said. “But why don’t we go in and just be excited to dive and have so much fun because we dive so much better when we are just having fun.”

—Staff writer Abigail M. Baird can be reached at ambaird@fas.harvard.edu.