When beloved diving coach Ms. Sorensen left at the end of last year, the dive team knew it was going to be tough without her. What they didn’t know, however, was that they would have to do it all by themselves. As the winter sports season hurried in, there was still no new coach, so the veterans of the team took on a whole new responsibility. They sought to continue to improve, but at the same time, to coach the new members. Senior captain Dina Voevodsky explains, “We split up the practice into two so the first hour was for experienced people so that we could just coach each other while practicing, and then the second hour was for the new people so that we could give them our full attention.” Voevodsky continues, “There was no one there to teach us how to do new things, so we just had to try them on our own and coach each other.”  

Senior Marcus Bartholomew, who was on the dive team his freshman and sophomore years and helped out Ms. Sorenson last year, also contributed this year. According to Bartholomew, he was there 2–3 days a week, and he helped “coach the veterans, because the veterans had to coach all the newbies, which meant that the veterans were not doing as much work on their own dives.” Bartholomew thinks that they have been doing really well without a coach, saying, “Everyone has been either getting a bit better or learning new dives.”

Diving without a coach was clearly a big commitment for everyone involved, but due to hard work and dedication, the team had a successful season. The team integrated many new divers into the team, and two divers even qualified for states: Zakariah Teffahi and Ezra Howe. This is quite an accomplishment, because of the fact that, without a coach, as Zakariah said, “I was training myself.”

Hopefully, next year there will be a new coach, and the CRLS diving program can continue to reach new heights.

This piece also appears in our February print edition.