When the Massachusetts swimming and diving team traveled to Providence to compete with Brown and Yale last weekend, Trent Kindvall put together an impressive performance that showed the Ivy League schools what he was made of.
Kindvall placed first in two diving events. Entering the tri-meet, Kindvall stood undefeated in the one-meter board event. Through three meets, the Colorado native had placed first in each of the competitions he had participated in.
“It felt really good to walk away from the meet beating some great competition,” Kindvall said. “Hopefully we’ll see a lot of those guys again at the NCAA zone meet.”
A score of 267.55 on Saturday awarded him the top spot in the event once again.
After placing first for the fourth time this season, Kindvall expressed how, “it feels good, especially when you have so many great teammates behind you pushing you to dive well.”
For the three-meter board event, a 277.60 was enough to award Kindvall his first win on the season in the event. The victory was one that was highly anticipated, with the diver placing second twice and third once earlier in the month.
For his impressive outing in Rhode Island, Kindvall was most recently named the Atlantic 10 Men’s Performer of the Week. The honor increases the total on the season to three for the UMass (1-1) men’s team, with junior Oliver Wyeth securing two in the pool earlier this season.
Presented with the honor for the first time since his freshman year, Kindvall explained, “it felt really good to come back around and put together a good performance [to get the award].”
Kindvall is currently in his junior year at UMass and competing in his third season as a part of the Minutemen diving program.
As an upperclassmen on the team, Kindvall knows the struggle of being one of the younger athletes and attempts to mirror what the athletes before him did when he was in his freshman season.
“I try [to] be there for them in order to help them through the experience of learning to dive at the collegiate level,” Kindvall said.
Originally from Westminster, Colorado, Kindvall attended Standley Lake High School for four years where he achieved three national qualifications at the Colorado State Championships.
Kindvall is the two-time defending A-10 champion in the three-meter dive. In 2015, a score of 322.25 awarded him the top spot as a freshman.
At last year’s championship meet, a 295.75 was enough to ensure a repeat in his sophomore season. In the one-meter event, a third place finish in 2016 followed a fifth place effort in his freshman season.
His efforts at the championships in the three-meter allotted him a spot on last year’s A-10 all-conference team.
Although Kindvall will not be diving this weekend when UMass travels to Boston to compete in the Terrier Invitational at Boston University, the meet is a very important one for the team.
The highly-anticipated matchup against top-level competition will be a big test for both the Minutemen and Minutewomen, who are looking for top performances out of several swimmers and divers at a key checkpoint in the middle of the season.
Liam Flaherty can be reached at [email protected].
