Springboard diving clubs, Oregon

Question
Hi tom, i am looking for a springboard diving club in or around our area (Eugene, OR) for my daughter to join. She is very interested in diving and has some experience, although she may need some lessons first to brush up before anything competetive. Any information would be great! thanks

Answer
Katie -

I used to coach in Oregon in the Portland area so I will tell you everything I know about diving in your state. I wish I had better news but unfortunately, if you do not live in the Portland area,I do not think there is really a place to find a coach. Here is why:

Oregon has no high school or college diving. Diving is a swimming event when it comes to scholastic sports. In Oregon, there is a lot of high school swimming but they choose to not include diving. The reason is that there are not enough high school pools with the deep water it takes to having a diving event. Since there is no high school diving, the colleges (only a few) have no students to recruit for their teams. Oregon State has women's swimming but no diving. The Ducks do not have a swimming program at all. There are a few small colleges with swimming but again, no diving programs.

I used to coach at the Tualatin Hills Dive Club in Beaverton. They are the only club team in the whole state. They have a great pool and a successful team and lesson program. When I worked there, I looked into what other pools were in the state with deep water and here it what I found in your area. There are 5 pools with diving boards in the Eugene, Springfield and Corvalis area. In Eugene, there is the Amazon outdoor pool that has diving boards.Also an indoor pool, both run by the City of Eugene Rec Dept. In Springfield, there is a great indoor pool with a really good diving well (Willamalane Pool). In Corvalis, the University has a small pool with a diving board and the City has an indoor pool with two boards. I approached the managers of all these pools and told them how there could be diving programs run there. They were receptive but at the time I was going to get it up and running, I accepted a job at Stanford University to run their age group program.So to my knowledge, nothing ever became of having a diving program where you live.Diving could flourish in the Eugene area but it would take someone with a lot of experience to do it. With no high school or college diving, it is hard to get a veteran experienced coach to move there.

Contact Head Coach Joe Lyons at www.tualatinhillsdiveclub.com and ask him if he knows if anything has developed in Oregon besides his team.

I wish you the best of luck in trying to find someone to coach in your area.