Division III Diving

Question
Hi--My daughter is a sophmore in high school and has recently transitioned from gymnastics to diving. She is with a club team and interested in diving for a Division III college. I'm not sure how realistic this is since she is starting so late although from a little research that I've done it seems that these schools need divers. Here is my question--what dives does she need to have for a Division III coach to be interested and does she need to be diving on both 1 and 3 meter.

Answer
Kathy -

Let me start by first saying that your daughter has not started in diving too late. She is still young in diving years as opposed to being too old to start gymnastics. Many of our best female divers in the US started at this age so she has plenty of years ahead of her. It is very realistic to be able to dive for any college at any division if she has the right dives.

Division III diving is the easiest of the three levels and is not much different than high school level diving on the one meter board. The only difference between Division III and high school age divers is that there is a 3 meter event in college and not in high school.So it is to her advantage to be able to dive 3 meter if she wants to travel with the team. Usually, if a diver can only dive one meter, they only dive at home meets.

The types of dives that college coaches are looking for are the ones called "optionals". These are the harder somersaulting/twisting dives with the higher degree of difficulty.An example of a one meter list of optionals include the following dives:

104, 105, 203, 303, 403, 5122, 5124, 5132, 5231, 5223, 5233, 5225.

(If you do not understand these dive numbers, go to www.usadiving.org, click on "Resources" and then "Degree of Difficulty Table" All dives have a number and letter that you will need to know about.)

On the three meter, college coaches are looking for the following dives:

105, 203, 205, 303, 305, 403, 404, 405, 5132, 5231, 5233, 5235, 5134.

If she can do some or all of these dives, Division III diving is very realistic to pursue.

Here some websites to go about college diving:

www.ncaa.com - Click on Championships and then look for Women's Division III Swimming/Diving. At that page, navigate your way around. Look for results of past championships to get an idea of what girls are scoring at these meets.

www.diverstocollege.com - New website by our most successful Olympic Coach, Ron O'Brien. Click on "View Coaches" and scroll down to Division III. Long list of coaches at that level. See what schools interest her and contact the coach for more info on their team.You may also want to sign up for his services to get your diver noticed by college coaches.

www.divemeets.com - Look up Past Meets, click on any meet that interests you. Look at results for girls 16-18 events. Click on any name and look at the list of dives they are doing and their scores. College coaches recruit divers from this website based on the dives they can do and the results of meets. She needs to dive in club meets hosted by this website to get noticed.

www.diving.about.com - Info on college diving as well as general diving info.

www.flipnrip.com - Click on college teams, huge list of schools with diving teams.

www.usadiver.com - Articles about college and other diving.

Good luck with her future college diving pursuits.