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Legendary British coach Jane Figueiredo, who was named Tennessee Head Diving Coach on April 24, has already made an impact on the program with the addition of 3 international divers for the 2025-26 season: Frazer Tavener and Thomas Ciprick will compete for the Vols and Desharne Bent-Ashmeil will join the Lady Vols.
Frazer Tavener – Springboard – Point Chevalier, New Zealand
Tavener specializes in 3-meter springboard and synchronized and has amassed 13 top-10 finishes on the international circuit. He recently competed at 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where he and his partner scored 375.66 to place 7th in 3-meter synchronized. He is a 3x gold medalist and 2x bronze medalist in Diving Grand Prix competitions and he won a pair of gold medals at the Malaysia Open Diving Championships in 2024.
Thomas Ciprick – Springboard – Calgary, Canada
Ciprick has been representing Canada Diving internationally since 2019. He had early success as a 16-year-old at the FINA Grand Prix in Rostock, Germany, in February 2020, when he came in 4th place in the 3-meter springboard. The year before, he won two silver medals in the 1-meter and 3-meter springboard events at the 2019 Junior Pan American Championships.
Desharne Bent-Ashmeil – Springboard – London, United Kingdom
Bent-Ashmeil had a stellar 2024, highlighted by a sweep of the 3-meter springboard, synchro, and mixed synchro events at the European Championships in Belgrade. Since 2022, she has posted 17 top-10 finishes internationally, including a silver medal in the 3-meter synchronized at World Junior Diving Championships in 2022.
The Lady Vols did not score on the 1-meter board at 2025 SEC Championships (their highest finish was 30th in prelims), while the men put 1 diver in the ‘B’ final. In 3-meter diving, the men had 1 ‘A’ and 1 ‘B’ and the women had 1 ‘B’ finalist. Both teams came in 3rd in their respective team standings.
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I’ve known Jane since the ‘80s when she was competing. Always a class act. Great hire for Tenn
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Jane is awesome. Such a great pickup for Tennessee
Unrelated:
@Braden Keith, is the article about IG followers growth for non Americans already published or is it still in the works ?
Excited to see the Vols break up the Big 3 in the diving world. Indiana, Purdue, Texas have dominated the NCAA world of diving. I think Jane and Mike are going to be big this year!
Auburn is on the upswing as well. Don’t forget UNC and Miami as well
I agree! John has a great squad at Auburn. Not a big fan of him brining in 10+ kids knowing he was going to cut more than half of them after one year. UNC has big international squad and an American girl who dove for Team USA. UNC also produced an assistant coach who just took over at South Carolina. Miami picked up great transfers after encouraging kids to leave their program for money.. We are just glad to see more schools support diving instead of Virginia taking away kids futures for more titles.
That’ll explain why the US only got 2 medals in the last 3 editions of diving world championship.
Can someone translate how good these signings are for a diving-dumb swim fan?
More points scored at championship meets for the team as a whole.
Jane coached team GB the last decade and was Tom Daley’s personal coach for his comeback(s). Prior to that, she coached at the University of Houston and coached some of Russia’s ’04 and ’08 Olympians. In addition, she had a plethora of domestic and international athletes who regularly scored top 8 at NCAAs on all 3 boards.
The University of Internationals/Tennessee continues recruiting foreigners – very smart since they are older, more experienced, less spoiled and grateful to be in America! Go Big Orange!
Good additions for the Vols, and they need them!