The University of Virginia is undergoing a “restructuring” of their swimming & diving program. The primary result of this restructuring is that the program will not support diving next season.
The program’s former head diving coach Josh Arndt left the program early in the season to take over as the head diving coach at Notre Dame. Former Virginia Tech diver Jack Gigliotti has been serving as the interim diving coach this season, but he has a full-time job outside of the sport and was not expected to return next season anyway.
The Virginia men scored only 4 points at the ACC Championships while the Virginia women scored 78. Senior Lizzie Kaye earned First Team All-America honors on 3-meter last season and Honorable Mention honors on 1-meter, but will be out of eligibility after this season. She is the only All-American diver in the 45 year history of the women’s program*.
* with the exception of the cancelled 2020 championship, where all qualified swimmers and divers were named All-Americans without competing.
The move comes amid a national conversation about how schools are going to reallocate resources in the post-Grant House world. Eliminating diving will open up another spot for a swim coach on the Virginia staff under NCAA rules.
Virginia does not have a 10-meter diving platform.
Roster Size
Virginia, like other ACC teams, are limited at 30 athletes on each of their men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams, and the Cavaliers don’t necessarily have to make many cuts to get under those numbers as they host a relatively lean roster as it is.
Sources close to the program told SwimSwam that the Cavaliers have a lower goal than that, though. While the program is open to going up to those limits, their goal is to be closer to 24 swimmers per gender.
One source told SwimSwam that the smaller rosters were described as more of a ‘soft target’ than a cap, and that there was space to flex to a larger roster if the right athletes came along.
This move is reflective of what many Division I coaches have told SwimSwam, which is that they view the smaller rosters as an opportunity to give athletes more individual attention and manage a more nimble roster. One coach even proposed to SwimSwam a limit of 12 swimmers and a number of divers.
While some large rosters (at times over 50 swimmers per gender) have been the choice of coaches, in many cases, they are mandated to meet Title IX balancing goals.
The House settlement is expected to mandate a maximum of 30 men and 30 women on swimming & diving rosters for schools that opt in. The SEC has instituted its own maximum of 22 men, though in many cases (like Texas) there will be more scholarships available for the smaller roster.
The Virginia women are the four time defending NCAA Champions, and are heavy favorites to repeat this season. The men’s team hasn’t had as much success in the Todd DeSorbo era, but they do bring in one of the best recruiting classes in recent history next season.
The schools should be forced to have a diving team and make recruiting adjustments accordingly. If you’re a head coach and can recruit big time swimmers, you should be able to hire a desirable diving coach and get hot shot divers. If everyone plays by the same rules, it makes the game a bit more interesting.
At least Grant House is rich now🙄
Embarrassing…
Shame on UVA for this decision. It’s one thing if you stop recruiting new athletes but to cut off divers who are already on the team is disgraceful. Several of these athletes pushed through a pandemic where they lost access to training facilities just as they were entering the recruiting period, missed a year of their junior competition but watched the 2020 class get an extra year at their expense…They entered college with fewer opportunities due to the number of Grad school swimmers and divers sticking around one more year, and now we see NCAA decisions play out just as we predicted where swim pushes diving out with no regard for the humans involved and the hard work they have… Read more »
Sadly, UVA has treated their divers poorly for a while. My recruiting trip there was terrible. I remember UVA swimmers saying things to me like, you seem really cool unlike our current divers who are fa*****s. Made it very easy to pick a different school. Granted, this was over two decades ago. But every other school I visited and the one I competed for valued their teammates and diving. I’ll never forget that awful recruiting weekend in Charlottesville. Still, it’s sad to see UVA make this choice.
if your recruiting trip to uva was 20 years ago…
not really relevant to their program, athletes, and coaches today.
Well this is interesting. What year exactly? I was there around that time. Would love to see how amazingly cool they were and are now.
Sadly it’s just playing out the current thematic material of –
1. Money is the only thing that matters.
2. People’s lives don’t matter unless they bring in money.
Understandable to vent. But let me assure you of this: every single major swimming and diving program is going through the exact same calculations, as their entire athletic departments are. Cal women, for example, are sitting at 37 with a big class coming in next season. They can’t be over 30 next season. Texas is at 35. Should athletes be “forewarned” about that? There will be a lot of announcements over a lot of sports, some of which probably will be no more or at a club level, from a lot if not all schools.
There are going to be a lot of articles like this, so be prepared. A post below says (a few times) that this decision has nothing to do with the House case, and that is just completely incorrect. Revenue share, new roster hard limits, and removal of scholarship caps are hugely impactful and are hitting at a time when athletic departments are losing money (check out the Big 10 figures, they are ghastly deficits). UVA, incidentally, is comparatively in pretty good shape.
Someone mentioned Texas (I think gloating a bit). Bob Bowman spoke to Missy and Katie last month about how Texas is cutting the number of swim team members (that would include divers) from 40 to 22 of… Read more »
Todd never cared about the divers and always put his attention on swimming. Divers played a major role in contributing points for ACCs and NCAAs. There have been multiple All American Divers (both Sydney and Lizzie), Olympic trial qualifiers, and diving podium finishes at ACCs (Sydney Dusel, Kylie Towbin). Look at the stats. There have been 4 coaches in the past 6 years, so clearly diving coaches are underpaid or not treated well.
Worth noting that Lizzie is not the only All-American diver in UVA’s history. Sydney Dusel received it in 2020 for the 1m and 3m. Not sure why her achievement isn’t being recognized…
I don’t believe all swimmers and divers who qualified for 2020 NCAAs received all American (which the asterisk above indicates). Only the top ranked (Sydney was ranked 1st in both 1M and 3M)
This is misinformed. All swimmers and divers received it. Ranking had nothing to do with it. If you qualified for the meet, you received All-American recognition from the CSCAA, not NCAA All-American status.
There wasn’t an NCAA’s in 2020. The CSCAA gave out a blanket award to anyone that qualified for the meet. It had nothing to do with the NCAA. It was essentially a participation trophy for an event no one actually participated in.
It is technically correct, though.
I don’t think Virginia would recognize it as legitimate, but the CSCAA will. I added a note above.
Jennifer Bell of the UVA Diving Team lso was designated All American in 2020 for both 1m and 3m. Two plaques received as well.
What IF – To save diving, and create more opportunities for athletes, diving was a separate sport program and not combined with swimming? What IF the dive team was relocated to another location elsewhere or even out of state to a sports facility that had the boards and platforms they require and the athletes attended class virtually?
I would look for diving to become a club sport at many schools. SEC/Big 10/Stanford/USC/UCLA will possibly be exceptions.
If men’s teams go to 22 in the SEC, I fear diving will not be continued at many of these schools.
Seems to me that cutting swimming and keeping diving is what would make the most budgetary conscious decision for universities to make. I think l swim coaches know that and are working against the diving portion of their program to proactively hedge their bets.
The SEC counts diving 1:1 to swimming yet provides divers with 3 events to compete in and swimmers 7? Word is that Todd has been pushing the same for the ACC.
The swim coaches make all decisions on the conference level with no consideration of diving. They refuse to give diving an equitable stake with a 2:1 consideration or approve to increase the number of events of diving.
Why is this? It’s a direct… Read more »
So, to save diving at UVA, the divers are going to live far, far away while they attend school in front of a computer OR just transfer to a school with a diving program so they can have the full college experience.
There probably won’t be many diving programs in Div 1. Indiana women are at 35 right now, so they have to cut to make the 30 limit. Michigan sits at 33. Cut. It’s a shame but that is where the conferences and the NCAA put people. It is not a UVA issue. The next part of this will be to what degree additional scholarships are given and to what extent from school to school.