HaydenBlaney

On Feb. 26, sophomores Leila Steinhoff and Luciana Popp made their way onto the podium at this year’s state diving championship. Popp placed sixth and Steinhoff claimed her first state championship.  

Although divers and swimmers together make up the Marian team, there are separate events for the NSAA State Diving Championship and the NSAA Swimming Championship. However, the points are combined for the overall state winner. 

“I started three years before my freshman year. I thought it would be a fun sport to try because it was fun to flip off of the diving board at my pool,” Steinhoff said. 

“I’d never dove before and I started freshman year tryouts. It was hard at first because I used to do trampoline… [and] being in gymnastics or trampoline translates really well into diving and you can get huge scholarships for diving in college,” Popp said. “I had a teammate that did trampoline with me and she was my same level. She was a role model for me and it made me want to try diving,” she said. She is speaking of Hailey Eriksen ’24, who earned a full ride to the University of South Dakota. 

Because of the specialization of the divers’ sport, they practice separately from the swimmers. “We practiced during the season at Burke, and swim doesn’t practice with us, but we do weights with them in the mornings. We kind of do our own thing,” Steinhoff said. 

The diving portion of the team consists of Steinhoff, Popp, sophomore Ariana Render and freshmen Evelyn Chapman and Kaitlyn Foley. “I feel like the divers are very tight knit,” Popp said. 

“We were consistently able to show up and work hard to get there,” Steinhoff said. 

On top of being a hardworking group, the divers are also incredibly supportive of one another. 

“Whenever I’m getting in my head, I’ll go talk to my teammates, or if they’re getting in their heads, I’ll just be like ‘you’ve done it a million times, you can do it.’ It’s one dive, it’s not really gonna break you,” Steinhoff said. 

“Even my teammates that didn’t compete were still able to go [to state]. Seeing them between dives was really helpful. I really like that I’m able to talk to them and it calms me down,” Popp said. 

The State Diving Championship was held at Bob Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln. They competed a day before the swimmers. 

“When I first got [to state], I was really stressing out, but once I started going off the board, I was like, we’ve worked so hard all season, might as well give it my best,” Popp said. 

Throughout the championship meet, Steinhoff did not look up at the scoreboard, relying on her experience and confidence to get the job done. “I never really look at the scores when I’m diving because that messes people up sometimes. So, I was going with the flow and diving how I normally dive,” Steinhoff said. 

Every meet, each diver gets 11 dive attempts to try to score as many points as they can. There are many kinds of dives the competitors can do. Steinhoff’s favorite is a reverse, where the diver rotates mid-dive, while Popp’s is a half pike, where the diver keeps their legs straight while bending at the hips.

At the end of the meet, Steinhoff stood at the top of the podium with 433.40 points and Popp joined her on the podium in sixth place with 342.45 points, accomplishing what she wasn’t expected to do. Points are awarded by judges on a scale of 1-10 for each dive. Then, those scores are multiplied by the degree of difficulty for the diver’s overall score.  

“I was going in pretty confident knowing I’d probably get top three, but to actually be up there was really exciting,” Steinhoff said.  

“I was so happy for her and we worked so hard for that,” Popp said. 

Diving Coach Kevin Hansen was a major factor for the girls’ victory. “Kevin pushed me so much this season to do things that I really didn’t want to do, and if he wasn’t so hard on me, I probably wouldn’t have done as well,” Popp said. Coach Hansen made this season, his last one before he moves away, a memorable one with the big win. 

The sophomores helped bring home Marian’s 18th Swim and Dive State Championship. 

Both girls plan to continue diving at Marian next season, promising great things for Marian Diving in the years ahead.