Let me start this off by saying this: I’m a diving guy. I was always on teams with good divers (shoutout Max Weyermann), and I think that has a lot to do with it. But I also just think it’s fun to watch. It has that basebally “pinpoint of emotion” thing when someone rips a tough dive.
I’m not a diving expert. Like most swim coaches, I am an adequate judge in a dual meet. I am the coach of record for a state champion and record breaking diver, but all I really did was make sure his dive sheet was turned in and that he was mentally ready to perform at the meet.
So I don’t want to get rid of diving from NCAA Swimming & Diving.
Pauses for heckling
Now that we’re past this, I do have an idea.
A Four Diver Final.
Or better yet:
A Two Diver Final.
I thought the ‘splitting diving into two rounds of three dives each’ was kind of a clever idea for this year’s NCAA Championships. It didn’t work, though it’s hard to isolate the variables in sessions that dragged for a lot of other reasons.
Diving at its core is a sport of grace, a sport of intensity, and a sport of intense mental and kinetic fortitude. When a couple of degrees is the difference between a 10 and a disaster, there’s no room in your body for nerves – at least not ones that create a physical reaction.
Let’s Lean Into That.
Diving actually does a pretty good job of showing us scoring. A better job, I’d say, than the overall meet does with team scoring.
But I think 8 divers is too much for people to follow along with. By the time one comes back around, the untrained audience has forgotten what happened last time.
Imagine the intensity of a four person diving final, or even a head-to-head diving final. That sense that these divers are competing against each other rather than against a field.
To me that’s must see TV.
I can think of a lot of ways to get there. You could dive an 8 person semi-final in the afternoon to whittle it down, or just take the top performers in prelims, and make those matter more too.
You could even make it a ‘skins’ competition, where there is an odd number of rounds, and you award each round to one diver or the other rather than a cumulative score.
This is not a get rid of diving idea. That’s why I said up front that I like diving. I don’t know if the diving coaches are going to be on board. But I think it could behoove them to be willing to be flexible – to ensure the futures of their programs.
I think it meets a lot of the goals of where the sport(s) are going. Better for TV. More compact. More appeal to a casual viewer.
According to whom?
Swimming not much better at this in my experience. They run swim meets for the officials.
How about we make diving like gymnastics? Team scorning only. Qualifications to the NCAA championships much like gymnastics. The events are rotated through much like gymnastics. Would limit the number of participants at the championships and could be done throughout the day before the swimming finals over the course of several days.
I am not a dive person and not being very innovative here, but Track and Field have started to do a few new things (and also tried a few changes that were not implemented on a grand scale – could still happen but probably/hopefully not).
In some events such as Discus, Long Jump, Shot Put etc finals starts with 12 people, after 3 rounds they go down to 10, after the 4th round they go down to 8 and for the final round they go to 6 athletes.
For something like this to work there would need to be other restrictions, such as a range of DD’s for certain rounds or other things for diving that I am not… Read more »
I’ve heard several versions of these knockout-style diving (from diving people and non-diving people) and I really like them. It would take some tinkering to get the *right* one but I think it’s on to something.
I suspect there will be a lot of consternation, as there would be/is in swimming, about limiting opportunities and how this prepares for the Olympic level. Namely, how do you develop dives, when the first 3 rounds carry different weight than the last 3.
But the NCAA system is not exactly a pipeline to Olympic medals anyway, certainly not in the way swimming is. If it works, it brings more attention to diving, more young divers, and that would maybe reignite the American diving… Read more »
Do you realize how boring it would be with 2 or 4 divers in finals. You would spend most of the time watching them walk up the tower, or run up since TV, dry off, visualize next dive, etc. because there was no time in between dives.
I thought diving was fast paced and needed very little change. I had no problem whatsoever keeping up with all 8 divers and neither did any of the fans seated on either side of me. The public address announcer was using solely the first name of each diver. That worked great and caused us to interject things like, “Bayleigh is up next.”
I was looking at the press tables during diving. The majority of reporters were not paying any attention whatsoever. Heads down staring at laptop or phone. Many had wandered away. So no kidding the reviews will be negative, and with lots of pretending.
There was definitely a gap in performance level. I could see cutting it to 6… Read more »
A very fine input can have a material impact on a dive score taking a 6.5-7.5 dive to a 3.5 – 4.5. And sometimes that can happen more than once in a round. It’s a highly technical sport. That’s what makes diving interesting at the highest levels where the degrees of difficulty can have a profound impact on total score. The round is not over until it is over. The competition is not over until the last diver completes their last dive. The overmatched diver you refer to above is the 2026 SEC Champion on platform scoring 306 in prelims and 350 in finals. At zones, the same diver scored 320 in prelims and 329 in finals. If you want… Read more »
Yeah but it’s still diving. Which is truly a bore to most swim fans. Any attempts to argue this point must actually go to a big swim meet like NCAA’s and watch the exodus of swim fans during the “diving break.” I’ve been to every NCAA Championship for the past 15 years and diving truly sucks the life out of as swim meet. Let diving be its own sport! I’m sure these are great athletes doing what they love to do….but how may diving fans would stick around for the darts portion of the competition if it was NCAA Diving and Darts? Bring on the downvotes from the 36 diving fans on this site……
Braden, as a dive coach, yes. And there is a vast majority I would say of diving coaches willing to try new things and realize we need to revitalize the sport. The appearance that we dont want change stems from those making the decisions stiffling the majority.
Head to head would be awesome, maybe make a final more of a knock out style event. Literally let’s do anything different.
While everyone is faulting the format of and qualifying into NCAAs on the swim side, there is something to be said that at least they are trying to make things better. They may make some decisions that just dont work out, but we can’t keep crushing the ambition to improve… Read more »
I used to have the opinion that diving should be separate, citing the year Miami had 3 guys in the top 8 or 12 across 1M, 3M and platform after they dropped men’s swimming and placed as a team in the top 10 I believe. I thought it would have been great to see them crowned as the top diving team champs officially. I’m not sure if that’s in the best interest of the sport long term.
I think the split final round was not a good idea. Maybe they should make it an 7-8 dive prelims, with 3 of those dives being required that everyone does kinda like required elements in gymnastics (not sure if they already do that).… Read more »
D1 diver here. I agree that the altered diving format this year was a bad choice. Quite frankly, most swimmers, swim parents, and swim fans don’t really care about the diving portion of the meet. So, inserting the diving awkwardly in between swim events would of course turn off many.
As you said, diving is a sport where you cannot afford nerves causing a physical reaction, and what could cause more extra nerves than a meet format entirely different from every other college meet (especially for a crowd of divers who have qualified by mastering the existing format)? Changing the meet in this way to try to force uninterested swim fans to watch is, from my perspective, detrimental to… Read more »