Auburn High School diver Pete Turnham has decided to stay home and go to Auburn’s university as well, after he made public his commitment to the Auburn Tigers on Wednesday evening.
“I’ve lived in Auburn and was wanting to get out,” Turnham said of his decision to stay close to home, “but in the end, the people on the team are what I cared about the most, and that’s why I chose Auburn.”
Turnham is primarily a springboard diver, and placed 33rd on the 1-meter at the 2013 USA Diving Junior National Championships. He’s also the defending Alabama high school state runner-up on the 1-meter, and finaled at the Zone D Junior Championships in 2013 on both the 1 meter and the 3 meter.
Depending on how the rest of the recruiting goes, Turnham could be entering SEC diving at precisely the right moment. The 2013-2014 season will see plenty of competition, but it will be an extremely senior-heavy competition, especially on the springboards. After that graduation, there will be a bit of a vacuum for the next few classes to jump into. Those sorts of cycles really matter in diving, given that the country is divided up into Zones, that are allocated NCAA qualifying spots on the basis of how well that zone did last year. Those who catch the trough after a big, successful, wave of graduation can see huge benefits in the structure of college diving.
Turnham currently dives at the Auburn Diving club under Jeff Shaffer, who also happens to be the head coach of the Auburn Tigers.
