The Little Club that Could

Waikato Diving Club enables anyone to become part of a second family which supports everyone to reach their goals from the poolside. The club, which has been running for 75 years, used to be part of the Swimming Club in Te Rapa. However, over time they’ve split into separate clubs.

Everyone is welcome even if they’re slightly challenged. As they say, diving helps with water confidence, spatial awareness, and promotes health and safety.

They teach a range of different diving squads, there’s learning to dive, competitive levels, age group, and elite. There are two parts of the club: competitive athletes who want to compete at a high level, and noncompetitive divers who are giving it a go.

The club coaches just want kids and anyone interested to give it a go and try something new.

The coaches work with every diver in the small club, as they know everyone is different. They like to push their divers as far as they can go, but they will also help if they develop a mental block. Diving is very much a mental sport as well as a physical challenge. The club chairman, Danny Hallen is passionate about seeing improvement.

“Some divers will find it just too hard. But it doesn’t matter because we want every kid to try… There’s so much joy seeing little kids’ faces when they accomplish diving off a high board.”

For young children, the coaches aim to grow deep-water confidence by initially helping learners to dive off the edge of the pool or the springboards. This doesn’t cause them to panic and prepares them for jumping off something and into water outside of the club.

Learning to dive is where they teach the skills divers need for higher levels in the sport such as jumping with a straight posture and rolling out of a tight little ball from one-meter and three-meter springboards with a tight core.

Although, diving is a small sport in New Zealand as there are limited boards and facilities. But that does not reduce the talent of this little country.

For example, Waikato Diving Club had three divers due to travel across to Australia, and a couple of girls across to Singapore early this year. However, due to Covid-19, this was unable to happen.

Jumping from a Higher Platform

Chloe Warrick started off as a gymnast but when she was 13 and realised she wasn’t improving,and with encouraging support from David Warrick, she made the switch to diving.

She was fairly disappointed at the time but found the demands of the sport similar to the skills she learnt in gymnastics.

It all started when one of her friends Olivia, who was a member at Waikato Diving Club in Te Rapa, invited Chloe along to an open day. At first, she didn’t enjoy it, finding the sport boring by comparison, and wasn’t too sure if it was what she wanted to do. However, she kept going as she said at first she didn’t really have anything else she could do.

“It was almost at the point of where I realised it was what I wanted to do.”

When Chloe first started everyone encouraged her and made her feel like she had known them forever. She now wants to give back to people who come to the club as it is like a family or second family for some divers.

Her role as club captain enables her to be like a big sister to her teammates, and help out if there’s something wrong.

“If people are new or doing a straight dive off the five metre but it’s scary for them, I want to support them so they can accomplish their goal and I can cheer for them.”

Now she’s 15 and it’s been about a year and half.

Chloe’s goal is to travel overseas and dive in different countries. She was meant to compete in Singapore, unfortunately it didn’t happen due to Covid-19. Chloe wants to learn how to do a two and half dive from every direction and complete dives of the 10 metre platform. She would like to coach one day.

She does extra work outside of the pool and goes to a gym. Before training they do an hour of dry land which consists of either core, legs or cardio; as well as an hour in the pool.

“It’s just such a great sport and great community of people and it’s just so different from gymnasts in the way you’re treated, it feels like you are someone.”

Chloe has no regrets from changing sports as diving is a relaxed sport, and diving has different aspects which you can be good at. whereas gymnasts are always compared.

She was so scared to compete at her first diving competition, but she was surprised how fun and enjoyable it was. It wasn’t stressful for her compared to gymnastics where she wanted the car ride to be five hours, so she wouldn’t have to go.

To get in contact with the club click here