Sophomore Connor Grant: I’m Connor, and this is Athletes of West, where we let athletes share their story. Alright, who am I here with today?

Freshman Eiley Minich: Eiley. 

Grant: What’s up? So, you swim? 

Minich: Yeah, I’m a diver. 

Grant: You dive, are you on varsity?

Minich: Yes. 

Grant: How long have you been diving for? 

Minich: I’ve been doing my summer clubs ever since I was a kid, but I started competitively two years ago. 

Grant: Have you dived on teams outside of school here? 

Minich: Yes, I am on a club team, and I have a swim team. 

Grant: So I’m not going to lie, some other people have said that you are really good; how does that even work? What makes someone good or bad at diving?

Minich: So, there’s point averaging and score averaging. So, what I get on a dive and the dives I can do, are generally… I can do harder dives, because I dive outside of school, and so I can do harder dives, so I generally get scored pretty well. 

Grant:  You all made it to districts?

Minich: Yeah, I made it my first meet. 

Grant: What’s your record? 

Minich: My record right now, well, we have two types of meets in diving. It’s 11 dive meets, where you do 11 dives. And six, where you do six dives. In 11 I think I got like 426, and so I hold the state record right now in that. And for the six dives, I think it’s 252.

Grant: Okay. So, how has being on a sports team, has it helped ease you into high school? 

Minich: Yeah, especially because [for] swim and dive, our JV and varsity system is weird. We are all combined and it’s kind of been nice to… I also did golf, too, so with swim and golf specifically we practice together so it’s been nice to be around upperclassmen. That’s been helpful because with diving it’s been split, so I’ve gotten really close with some of the upperclassmen on the team. Which has helped me get to know the school. 

Grant: On your other dive team, how successful have your teammates been at that sport? 

Minich: One of my former teammates, his last year on the team was the year I joined, he went to the Olympics, and another girl who is at Duke right now –– she was in the last Olympic trials.

Grant: Alright, say you’re a five-star recruit; you can go to any college in the nation, where are you going to dive? 

Minich: I would wanna go to Duke.

Grant: Why? 

Minich: They have one of the best dive programs, and I also really like their school, so it’s a good middle. That’s just my dream school; it would be Duke.

Grant: So, what got you into swim and dive?

Minich: I was a gymnast competitively growing up, so it was an easy transition from gymnastics to diving. 

Grant: How are they similar? 

Minich: Really, just gymnastics is a lot of flipping and twisting and all of that. Your body awareness and how you flip in the air, it’s really easy to transition to flipping off of a diving board. 

Grant: Alright say you’re on that board; you’re about to dive, what’s the mindset looking like? 

Minich: So, there’s different things I have to think about before each dive, so it differs.. So,sometimes I’ll think about how I need to slow down my hurdle, or when I get off the board I need to keep my head up, or keep my legs straight. I think about certain corrections for each dive before I go. 

Grant: And say you dominate the competition, how do you celebrate? 

Minich: How do I celebrate? We have a really good team, so a lot of time when I do really well, my teammates do really well. A lot of times we go and hang out afterwards. At our last meet, we got one, two, and three. So there’s the three of us, and it was like, one, two, three,Stuff like that, a lot of times it’s nice to celebrate with my team.

Grant: Alright and would you recommend other people like incoming freshmen coming into high school to join swim and dive? 

Minich: We’re really, really tight, all of us as girls, and it’s just been, it’s been a great experience, specifically as a freshman, because we’re all so close. And it’s giving me another people, so I would recommend it. 

Grant: And has that affected like academics, you know, because you got practice after school, does that affect the school or anything?

Minich: I stay here after school for two hours between when school ends and when dive starts because I don’t have a ride home, so I just do all my homework in that time. So it hasn’t really, it’s just, actually, I stay here and just do homework. 

Grant: No one takes you home?

Minich: I don’t have a ride back. My parents don’t get off work. 

Grant: What about the people on the swim and dive team? 

Minich: I could ask her, but then I feel bad, because one of my teammates already drives me everywhere. And there’s two other girls to stay too, so I’m not alone. Three of us stay and we just, like, for a couple hours. It’s, I mean, it’s annoying, but it’s what I got to do. 

Grant: Oh my, I thought you were just chilling at the school by yourself. 

Minich: That would be scary. I mean, I would have to do it anyway, but that would be scary.

Grant: Yeah, at that point I’m asking for a ride home.

Minich: Yeah, if I took the bus, I just wouldn’t have anyone to drive me back.

Grant: And how hard is that to, like, have dive like twice a day. It’s like twice the workload. 

Minich: It’s a lot. I mean, honestly, staying after school to get my homework does help, but my sleep schedule is not great. 

Grant: What’s it looking like?

Minich: It depends on how much homework I have. Because I’m in, I have a lot of homework, because I am in all honors. So it’s rough, like three or four hours. So I get like half of it done normally before practice, and then I’ll do another couple hours when I get home, which is around 9:30.

Grant: Then what are you doing in your free time? If you’re not diving or doing homework? 

Minich: I have a part-time job.

Grant: Who’s, like, who is the role model, right? 

Minich: The role model?

Grant: You don’t have one, so yourself?

Minich: Well, for diving, or in general?

Grant: Let’s go in general.

Minich: In general, I think probably my mom. She has six degrees, speaks three languages, is like, she’s done a lot.

Grant: Thank you for listening and stay tuned for more episodes of Athletes of West.