LOS ANGELES – UCLA redshirt senior diver Maria Polyakova has been named the Pac-12 Diver of the Week, the league announced on Wednesday morning.
Though she was named Diver of the Week, the award covered the period from Jan. 1-20.
Polyakova has won all three events in which she entered since the calendar turned over to 2019.
Most recently, she finished first in the 3-Meter Championship at the Bruin Diving Invitational on Friday, Jan. 18. The Moscow, Russia native totaled a score of 697.70 over the prelims and finals, including a Dirks Pool record 375.75 in the finals. Polyakova has now set pool records in 3M and 1M (355.50 on Nov. 3, 2018) this season.
She swept the 1M and 3M championships in a double dual-meet against San Diego and Harvard on Jan. 7, taking the former with a score of 317.75 and the latter with a mark of 326.10.
This is the second weekly/monthly honor of the season for Polyakova. She was previously tabbed as the Pac-12 Diver of the Month for November after establishing her aforementioned pool record in 1M, which also stood as a school and meet record. She has been named the Pac-12 Diver of the Month/Week six times in her career.
Polyakova wasn't the only Bruin in the running for a weekly award, as teammate Eloise Belanger was nominated for UCLA/Muscle Milk Student-Athlete of the Week honors. Belanger, a native of Montreal, Quebec, won the 1M and platform championships at the Bruin Diving Invite while finishing second in 3M. Making her 2018-19 debut, she qualified for NCAA Zone Championships in all three events.
No. 20 UCLA (8-0) is next in action at Stanford on Friday, Feb. 1 and at Cal on Saturday, Feb. 2.