In a school of more than 2000 students, it is  hard to believe that one of our teams only has one athlete it is hard to believe that an athletic team is made up of only one athlete. “Originally I taught myself how to dive because there was no program,” Megan Groeller, junior, said. “ I attempted to swim, but no, that doesn’t work. Now I’ve been diving since 6th grade.” After becoming interested in diving, Groeller proceeded to teach herself how to dive before joining a  club diving team and eventually the school diving team. But not only did she join the diving team, she became the diving team

Before Groeller became a diver, she was constantly jumping, flipping, and twisting as a cheerleader, but that did not necessarily help her when she began diving. The motions were completely different, and she had to relearn them.

“I was a cheerleader, so I did a lot of backwards things and twisters. I also watched a lot of olympic diving videos,” Groeller said. “I thought [cheerleading] would make it a lot easier to learn to dive but it didn’t. The twisting is all different so I had to change how I twisted. Also, in cheerleading, you’re on a flat surface and in diving you’re jumping off a board and then you’re in the weather and there’s a lot happening really quick, and a lot can go wrong. It’s a lot to re-learn.”

Megan does not think that swimmers and divers get the recognition that they deserve. While not many people know about the swim team, even less people are aware of the diving team.

“It kinda stinks [not to get publicity from the school] because if I tell someone that I’m the only diver they’re like, ‘oh I didn’t know we had a swim team,’ and some people may know we have swimming but they really don’t know about diving.”

But that does not stop Groeller from doing what she loves. She continues to do what she loves and work hard to practice her skills.

“When you’re learning to dive, one of the first things they teach you is how to walk off the board. You also learn  safe distance that you have to be from the board, which is about an arm’s length,” Groller said, “[You] definitely [have to know] how to not hit your head on the diving board. I haven’t yet, but I have seen other people do it and it’s incredibly scary. I’ve hit my hands or feet on the board and that actually really hurts.”

Although swimmers and divers practice together, the two sports are very different. The athletes for both sports have to practice differently and compete differently.

“A lot of people think that diving is really similar to swimming, but it’s not. You don’t need to know how to swim to dive and you don’t need to know how to dive to swim,” Groeller said, “there’s not a lot of people who do both.”