Concern over HS diving’s future grows amid depth issue

Naturally, some of the highest degree-of-difficulty attempts in diving have quite a bit of contortion.

After all, that’s how you land strong scores from a tough panel of judges, with every point making a difference on the road to state.

Diving might need contortion beyond its normal repertoire to maneuver through a concerning trend, though.

We are less than a month removed from state diving, in which in Division II we had a girls state champion in Chagrin Falls junior Samantha Holtz and a boys state runner-up in University senior Cameron Bizjak.

No sport may deliver the consistency on big stages with as much stealth effectiveness as diving. Counting Holtz’s first and Bizjak’s second, there have been 45 top fours all-time in state diving amassed by News-Herald coverage area schools.

Last January, I discussed the need for more 11-dive opportunities in the regular season. Not as part of swimming invitationals, because that wouldn’t be feasible. Rather, standalone 11dive invitationals so divers can get more reps before February.

In this day and age, there is a decent chance a diver may see one or even zero 11-dive invites before going to district. Six-dive meets in duals and tris is all well and good, but not having more 11-dive repetition inevitably makes the road more difficult for divers.

It’s a concern. Unfortunately, it’s not as much of a concern over one other aspect to this dynamic.

There is clearly a lack of a steady stream of diver volume in Ohio.

This past postseason showed that trend and then some.

This is not stated to be insulting toward the student-athletes who participated. It’s just a statement of fact.

But for the D-II diving competition last month at the Cleveland State District, there were 19 girls and 18 boys in the field. Across all schools in the Northeast.

Of those 18 who took part in boys D-II, 14 qualified for the state meet. So after the second cut through eight dives for the final three, that meant all but two of the divers still going were advancing to Canton.

Why? Because it was a notably rough volume year for the combined Central/ East/Southeast District, too.

They had two boys and 10 girls. Total.

The Northwest District had 33 girls and 19 boys in D-II. The Southwest District had 11 girls and five boys.

So across the entire state of Ohio — in a two-division sport — there were 44 boys and 73 girls who took part in the postseason in D-II diving this year.

It feels as if, at minimum, D-II diving numbers not only are not expanding, but they may also be contracting.

D-I is a bit different in Greater Cleveland, with 41 girls and 29 boys taking part in the CSU District. But the necessity for sectional diving, which typically took place at Solon, is no longer there.

Basically, it’s easier for all involved to jump into a long district day and not even have a sectional.

Just because there are only a little more than 100 families in Ohio with D-II divers in their household, with the number of course being significantly fewer as far as schools represented, doesn’t mean it’s not any less important than any other state competition.

But it’s not only numbers. There aren’t traditional diving wells at every corner.

The craft needs some help here.

I’ve long contended during soccer season in the fall, because of youth structure and the sport not making it to all places for various reasons, it’s possible the best 16-year-old soccer player in the United States isn’t actually playing soccer. They may not even know it, because they never tapped into that skill set.

That premise seems as if it carries pretty well into diving, too.

It’s entirely possible a fantastic collection of divers are walking the hallways at area schools right now and have no idea that’s the case because diving hasn’t reached or won’t reach their radar.

So many of the success stories we come across locally in diving are the converted — mostly current and former gymnasts, but also student-athletes from other sports.

There were four NewsHerald coverage area girls D-II divers who qualified for state in 2023. In addition to two longtime staples in Holtz and Hawken’s Cristianna Reineke, the other two were Kenston’s Mary Cowan and Beaumont’s Riley Becker.

Cowan is one of the most accomplished area gymnasts of her generation. She took on diving as a senior for the first time and qualified for state.

Becker previously played volleyball, took on diving as a junior for the first time and qualified for state.

In order for diving to thrive more, there needs to be more of those stories.

I was randomly thinking at CSU this year — and I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me before. But, for example, high jumpers in track and field would be great divers if you think about it. It’s the same general concepts of body control and contortion and elevation requirement, just with a different takeoff and landing.

Could you imagine the value high jumpers could get heading into the spring if they hit the diving board first in the winter and refined their control, contortion and elevation there?

It would absolutely make them better high jumpers.

There’s enjoyment each and every year for me heading to CSU’s Busbey Natatorium and to Canton McKinley’s Branin Natatorium for diving at the district and state level, respectively. It’s a great coverage sport between the student-athletes, families and coaches involved, the close-knit bond of that community, how welcoming they are and the atmosphere and interest.

Whether it’s coaches, schools or club programs, diving needs to market itself to more eyeballs.

Maybe open clinics would help. Maybe word of mouth could improve. Maybe striving to get more divers started earlier.

It’s not the select few student-athletes currently involved who are doing anything wrong, of course.

It’s just that something needs to happen to bring more numbers to diving, so we can see more high degree-of-difficulty contortion on boards all over Ohio.

Lillstrung can be reached at CLillstrung@News-Herald.com; @CLillstrungNH on Twitter.