NA Girls Sweep WPIAL Diving For 3rd time in Last 4 Years, Lola Malarky Wins Gold
For the third time in the last four seasons, the North Allegheny girls’ diving team swept the top three spots atop the podium at the WPIAL Class AAA Diving Championships. Junior Lola Malarky won WPIAL gold, while junior Juliet Hood placed second and sophomore Maggie Lapina took third place.
Malarky took top honors with a final score of 510.55 and will qualify for states for the third time in her career. Malarky placed fourth as a freshman and won WPIAL bronze last season as a sophomore. Malarky is the 13th champion at Class 3A to post a score over 500.00. She is also North Allegheny’s fourth different WPIAL champion in the 1-meter dive and captured the school’s ninth title overall. She joins Nikki Joa (1993), Christina Shi (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), and Jaime Tomazich (1994, 1995, 1996) among the Tigers’ winners.
Hood claimed second place with a final score of 470.15 and Lapina won bronze with a score of 412.90. Both Hood and Lapina qualify for the PIAA diving championships. For a look at all scoring from the WPIAL girls’ diving championships, click here.
In 2020, North Allegheny’s Christina Shi, Maya Ennis and Zoe Ky made history as the first divers from the same school to finish first, second and third at the WPIAL diving championship. A year later, that same trio did it again. The triumvirate of Malarky, Hood and Lapina repeated that feat with a 1-2-3 finish on Saturday, creating a dynasty of dominance for the NA divers against WPIAL competition.
For the NA Boys, sophomore Ethan Maravich finished in fifth place with a final score of 385.85. The top four divers advanced to the PIAA championships, meaning that Maravich narrowly missed out on qualifying for states. For a look at all diving scores in the WPIAL boys’ diving championships in Class AAA, click here.
North Allegheny will next take part in the WPIAL Class AAA Swimming Championships on Feb. 29 – March 1 at Trees Pool on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. The NA Girls will take a total of 53 team points into the Swimming Championships thanks to the 1-2-3 performance by the NA Divers (20, 17 and 16 points). NA’s 53 points is a good head start ahead of Mars (26), Fox Chapel (18), Seneca Valley (17) and Upper St. Clair (16).