Trinity Swimming and Diving: Divers train in Puerto Rico for the winter!

Trinity divers doing what they do best.

Puerto Rico. Sunshine. Warm days. Lots of diving. Some really good times with great team-mates and conscientious coaches. An awesome experience and a bunch of really cool memories.

I would bet there is not another team in the United States training harder than the Trinity University divers, and we have the results to back it up. This year, as last year, the team traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico from January 2nd - 10th. We practiced 4 hours a day every day, and we had a good time together when we weren't training.

High caliber coaches: Ryan Cook, Angelique Rodriguez,
Jenn Hess, and Stan Randall.

Let's start off by talking about some of the perks that come with training in San Juan. We practiced at The National training facility at Parque Central in San Juan. With a world class diving facility, we couldn't ask for a better place to train. Along with the facility, our divers were treated to some high caliber coaching. Helping me with the team this year were Jenn Hess, Angelique Rodriguez, and Ryan Cook. Jenn Hess, currently the head coach at Mile High Dive Club in Denver, is one of the top diving coaches in the world. Angelique Rodriguez is a 3 time Olympic diver for Puerto Rico and one of Puerto Rico's National team coaches. Ryan Cook is a Trinity alumnus, All-American, and 4 time conference champion on both boards.

Trinity divers snorkeling and enjoying the water.

Apart from all the time we spent working out, our divers got to take a private catamaran cruise to a gorgeous desert island, where we dropped anchor, snorkeled, and worked on our suntans on the beach. The fun did not stop there. We cruised on over to another island, dropped anchor over a reef to snorkel and hand fed the fish left overs from our lunches. Toward the end of our training camp, shopping and dinner in Old San Juan was the kind of treat that makes an "international" trip extra special. Exploring El Moro and checking out the history was cool too.

Coach Randall preps the divers as they get ready for
a practice session.

In order to get ready for the Conference Championships and hopefully the NCAAs, we used this training camp to develop their very highest difficulty dives. All of our Trinity divers mastered their difficult dives in those 10 days at Puerto Rico.

Senior, Hayley Emerick has one of the most difficult women's diving lists in the United States. She is performing most of the dives the men do in competition. It should be noted, that Hayley was the only female diver performing a front three and a half somersaults at the NCAAs last year. Sophomore Ruth Hahn has added considerable difficulty to her list of dives this year. She too is performing a lot of the men's dives. One in particular is a back one and a half somersaults with two and one half twists. Sophomore diver Lynne Bettinger has the second most difficult women's list in the country. She is performing a back two and a half somersaults in the pike position, which carries a difficulty of 3.0. Freshman Katie Sheldon and Gabi Caglieris completed their competitive 3-meter lists and are ready for the Conference Championships. Junior Kristin Nordstrom learned a new double twisting one and a half somersaults from the 3-meter, and senior Rebecca Parrish, after one year of studying abroad has rejoined the team and put her competitive list back together. Sophomore Madison Kahler did an outstanding job polishing her already good 1-meter and 3-meter competitive lists.

Junior Kevin Martin working on fundamentals.

Senior Andrew Snead now has a very difficult NCAA list, competing back, reverse, and inward two and a half somersaults on the 3-meter. Senior Jack Foreman, after a lengthy injury, was able to concentrate on his list of dives at the training camp in preparation for Conference. Junior Kevin Martin, returning from Australia after studying abroad, has completely upgraded his competitive lists with the most difficulty we have seen thus far. Kevin is competing what is know as a full pike list, which translates into a very high degree of difficulty. Junior Matt Hawley did a fine job adding a back two and a half somersault to his 3-meter list. First-year team member, Jacob Meyer, who was a PE diving student at Trinity, has now completed a full list of dives on the 1 and 3-meter boards.

With all the hard work they put in at Puerto Rico this year, we're hoping for some great diving at Conference this year, and maybe a few National Qualifiers.

-Coach Stan Randall