Families sometimes ask what it looks like to stay with diving for a long time. For a lot of our athletes, it starts with a nervous kid at a summer camp, standing at the end of the 1 meter board for the first time. A few years later some of those same kids are training five days a week, competing in USA Diving meets, and, for a few, talking about diving in college.

Getting from the first jump to the competitive track takes years, and it happens one step at a time. This is how it works at TVD.

A typical path

Picture a diver, based on paths we have seen more than once. She comes to a summer camp at age 8 because a friend was going. She has never been on a diving board. By the end of two weeks she can do a forward dive and wants to keep going. She joins Future Champions in the fall, two practices a week. By 11 she is at four practices a week and working through Gold. At 12 she has her front, back, reverse, and inward dive on 1 meter and a back line up tuck on 3 meter, and she is invited to Junior Olympic. By 16 she is training on 1 meter, 3 meter, and platform, traveling to meets, and starting to think about college diving.

No stage was a leap. Each one was the next step.

Stage 1: Summer Dive Camps (ages 5 to 13)

Most TVD athletes take their first dive at one of our Summer Dive Camps. Over a two-week session, kids learn the basics and find out whether they like the sport. Camp is low pressure on purpose. We are not trying to make specialists at age 7. We want kids to leave wanting to come back. The only requirement is being able to swim in deep water.

Stage 2: Future Champions (ages 5 to 13)

Divers who want to keep going join Future Champions, which meets two or four times a week for 90 minutes. This is where the real skill building happens. Future Champions runs on three skill levels, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, that teach the fundamentals of springboard diving in order, one step at a time. Gold ends with the four dives on 1 meter and a back line up tuck on 3 meter, and that is the standard for Junior Olympic. We do not move a diver to the next dive until the one under it is solid. It can look slow from the stands. It is the foundation that decides how far an athlete can go later. You can see the whole progression on our Skill Levels page.

Stage 3: High School (ages 14 and over)

The High School program prepares divers to compete for their high school on the 1 meter springboard. Strong 7th and 8th graders who are ready for a more demanding group can join early. Many of our high school divers compete for their school teams, and the year-round training they do here is what sets them apart during the short high school season. This is also the stage where some athletes start asking how far diving can go, which is a good question to be asking.

Stage 4: Junior Olympic (four dives to join)

Junior Olympic is for any athlete who has the four dives and the back line up tuck, at any age, and who wants to compete in USA Diving’s competitive system. JO divers train five days a week on 1 meter, 3 meter, and platform, building full competition dive lists. This is also where the college conversation becomes real. Diving is one of the few youth sports with a real path to college athletics, and our JO divers train inside the system that leads there. The divers our coaches have developed have gone on to programs across the country and in all three NCAA divisions. If you want to know how that path works, we wrote a guide to diving in college.

Not every athlete gets to the standard, and not every athlete who does chooses to join. For the divers who do, this is where years of patient work on the basics pay off.

The path, not the destination

Plenty of our athletes never go to Junior Olympic. They dive through high school, enjoy it, and carry the confidence and discipline into the rest of their lives. That is a good outcome too. What these four stages give a family is a real path, coached the same way at every step, that an athlete can follow as far as they want to take it. Some stop after camp. Some go all the way to a college pool. Wherever your child’s diving ends up, the work along the way will have been done right.