IRVING, Texas, April 9. CONFERENCE USA honored the league's most outstanding student-athletes in swimming and diving on Friday. The recipients were selected by a vote of the Conference USA swimming and diving head coaches. SMU\u2019s Flavia Rigamonti was named 2006 C-USA Swimmer of the Year, while Houston\u2019s Tania Cagnotto earned the Diver of the Year accolade, as announced by the conference office. <\/p>\n
Rigamonti broke two meet and pool records en route to capturing the 500 and 1,650-yard freestyle crowns at the 2006 Conference USA Championship. The senior, who was named Co-Swimmer of the C-USA Meet on Feb. 25, notched over 10 first-place finishes and over 15 top-three finishes this season. Rigamonti garnered Swimmer of the Week honors a league-record four times this season. <\/p>\n
In February, the Switzerland native topped the C-USA Meet record in the 1,650-yard freestyle event with a time of 15:59.96 and earned the gold in the 500 free with a time of 4:40.55. That mark beat the previous championship record of 4:45.90, which was set by Maria Oberg of Cincinnati in 2002. Rigamonti concluded her collegiate career in Federal Way, Wash., at the 2006 Spring Championships, competing among 700 elite athletes. <\/p>\n
Seeded for a seventh place finish in the 400-meter freestyle event, the veteran pulled a silver medal and a time of 4:16.44 and posted a time of 16:24.56 for first-place in the 1,500-meter free. She is a four-year All-American in the 500 and 1,650-yard free as well as a five-time NCAA Champion. <\/p>\n
Cagnotto was a unanimous selection after establishing herself in her first collegiate season as one of UH and Conference USA\u2019s finest divers. The Bolzano, Italy, native swept all three diving events at the C-USA Championship, joining former Cougar and five-time NCAA individual national champion Yulia Pakhalina as the only divers to accomplish that feat.<\/p>\n
At the 2006 NCAA meet, Cagnotto scored 338.45 points to earn an eighth-place finish in the 3-meter springboard and 286.95 points to finish 11th on the 1-meter springboard. Those performances earned Cagnotto All-America honors as a freshman. The Cougar won both the 1- and 3-meter springboard events at the 2006 NCAA Zone D meet. Cagnotto also was a seven-time C-USA Diver of the Week honoree, setting a new UH single-season record in that category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IRVING, Texas, April 9. CONFERENCE USA honored the league's most outstanding student-athletes in swimming and diving on Friday. The recipients were selected by a vote of the Conference USA swimming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n