diving lesson, child, San Francisco

Question
My daughter, age 9, loves gymnastics and spends a lot of time doing it.  She also thinks she might like diving.  I thought it might be fun to try over the summer and see if there is some passion and interest there.  Can you suggest a starting place?

Answer
Christina -

The City is not known for having a place for girls your daughters age to learn to dive. There are two schools with diving equipment (U.S.F. and St. Ignatius H.S.) but the pools are only for the students and they have no diving coaches. The closest and best place to go is Stanford University. They have an excellent age group diving program. I will leave contact info at the end of my answer. North of you the closest is a program run by the City of Santa Rosa which is farther than going to Palo Alto. To the east there is a team in Walnut Creek and a swim school in Lafayette. U.C. Berkeley has a new diving coach who may run a summer program for young divers but I am not sure as they never have a had an age group team.

I am familiar with all these programs as I am originally from the Bay Area having coached in Santa Clara County in the 70's through mid 90's.There are excellent diving programs all over Northern California, just not in San Francisco which is not much of an aquatic city.

You should take a trip down to Stanford and have her watch a diving lesson to see what it is all about. Most of diving is girls between the ages of 9 and 24 and most of them are ex-gymnasts.Their website is www.stanforddiving.org. Ask for Coach Ryan Wallace. Ryan was one of my junior college divers when I coached at De Anza College in Cupertino.He does a great job with new young divers.There is another person you may want to contact. Her name is Kelly Winterbottom. She is a member of their Masters Diving Team (masters is a term for adult recreational competitive diving). She lives in San Mateo and I think she runs a lesson program somewhere in San Mateo but I am not sure where. Her e-mail address is [email protected].

To find the other programs I mentioned above, go to www.usadiving.org. Click on clubs and then find a club, enter CA and a list of teams will come up. If you do not see the Berkeley program, contact the coach directly through the schools athletic department website which is easily found on Google.

Another wesbite to go to is www.diving.about.com. All kinds of information here about diving for new kids. Just type in 'lessons' in the search box and articles will come up about what to expect.

Good luck. I am sure she will find Stanford a great place to be even if it is a long drive for you!