Kaitlin does not have a video yet, but here is a SAMPLE of an NCSA professionally edited video
- Sample Video
Personal Statement
I started diving when I was just five years old. I saw my current coach, Cj Hardy working the harness rig over the water and could not believe the types of skill that athlete was completing. I walked up to Cj and asked him if I could try what they were doing, so he had me do a 101A off the board. Since that moment I found my life's passion. Through the eleven years of being apart of this sport I have competed many times. My coach had my compete in the USA regionals yearly once I turned 8. I qualified to zones when I turned 10 in 2011. However, from 2013-2015 I could not compete due to what I thought was knee injuries. However, after going to the chiropractor, the only problem was my patella tendon was not strong enough therefore, my knees and hips fell out of alignment. Since discovering this I competed at the 2016 USA regionals after only two months of training from my rehabilitation period and got 29th place.
The end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 season has been hard on me and my coach. Our facility of ten years kicked us out because they wanted new blood, thinking that my coach was too old. The past four months we have been fighting for any pool time that we could get by going between three college facilities and having to drive to Oregon every other weekend to train 3m and platform. At the beginning of 2017 I did think that I would never be able to dive again and that all of my hopes of just being able to compete platform would be crushed. After a few days of processing the harsh reality of this, my reaction actually surprised me. I started working harder than ever before. I would train twice a day and change my diet completely so it was only good fuel for my body. Since getting my team removed from the facility, I have resulted in being the only high school competitive diver in Idaho. We have finally been accepted to train at the College of Idaho and use their facilities. From that transition, I had the wonderful ability to compete at two AAU meets back to back in March. The first one I ended up getting last place with a score of 205. The next weekend I only made one change to my list, which actually caused me to have the lowest DD. Despite this, I ended up qualifying for the 2017 AAU RWB Nationals in Texas.
After going through the hardships of my career from simple, misdiagnosed injuries, to losing my career-long facility, I have learned a lot about myself as a diver. Being from Idaho and not having the expensive facilities or dryland equipment as other teams, I've learned to never take a practice or opportunity for granted. Each time I get to step into a facility with a platform and 3m, I get minimum 3 new dives on each. I fell in love with training platform and 3m springboard, so any chance I can get to train or possibly compete on them, I will take it. My goal in college is to harness the opportunity to train these higher levels, because the last 11 years of my career I've only been able to train 1m. Any chance I can get will be a humble one that I would cherish immensely.
