Diver Carrie Scherer showed off some of her tumbling skills at this weekend's U.S. Senior National Diving Preliminaries. She placed 12th on the 1-meter board and 15th on 3-meter.

On the 3-meter dive, the junior took her final steps toward the board's end, and stumbled. Before the mishap, she was in fourth place.

"I don't know who put those speed bumps on that board," Diving Coach Craig Brown said, "but she faltered at the end."

Amazingly enough, Scherer also slipped on 1-meter the day before. She blamed bad luck for her misfortunes.

"Even with those problems, I think the other coaches realized that I could've done better without all that bad luck," Scherer said.

Freshman Seth Kane placed 15th in the men's 1-meter and 19th in 3-meter. Brown said everything was going well for Kane until it was time for him to do his reverse 3 1/2, "the toughest dive in the book."

"Seth was going well with it in practice," Brown said. "but he just didn't hit it in the meet."

Kane said he achieved the necessary height for such a dive, but he wasn't spinning fast enough.

"I was also a bit nervous," he added. "I think my pusle dropped from like 200 to 80."

The top four from each event will go to Senior Nationals, April 13-17 at the University of Minnesota. Neither Scherer nor Kane qualified at this weekend's meet, which was open to all ages; however, junior Chris Devine already earned his way there with his NCAA Championship performances two weeks ago.