During the first round of dives between the Syracuse swimming and diving teams and Pittsburgh Saturday, not much distinguished one diver from another. The scores read like a broken record: 6, 6.5. 5, 5.5. 5, 4.5. 6, 6.5.

Then the eighth and final diver, Pittsburgh’s Alex Volovetski, exited the adjacent hot tub and slowly made his way to the 1-meter diving board. He walked the plank, tilted his head down, tipped his toes together at 45-degree angles and raised his arms parallel to the ground. When the announcer stated the dive he was about to attempt, even someone foreign to diving jargon could understand that Volovetski was entering uncharted waters, at least compared to everyone else.

‘He was doing dives that regular, everyday divers just don’t do,’ Syracuse diving coach Tom Skuce said. ‘They were the exceptional, most difficult dives.’

Diving events usually have little impact on a swimming meet as a whole. They compose only two of the 26 total events. But now and then, the hour-long segment offers a spectacle worth complete attention. Volovetski earned at least an eight on half of his 1-meter dives, and he was the only diver to attempt a dive with a degree of difficulty 3.0 or above. The junior from Seffner, Fla., earned 392.02 points in the 1-meter – 127.27 more than the next-best diver. In the 3-meter, he finished with 357.37 points – 74.32 more than the next competitor.

Volovetski’s two wins were more like extra points in the Panthers men’s 154-89 win over Syracuse. But these two PAT’s ripped through the field goal netting. His performance was rare.

‘It’s a joy to watch. All of the divers look up like, ‘How did he do that?” Skuce said.

Skuce, a Syracuse diving alum himself who once swam against Pittsburgh’s diving coach Julian Krug, said Pittsburgh is a haven for the nation’s best divers.

‘The big diving schools have two or three (great divers),’ he said. ‘Nobody around has that caliber. Pitt has a tremendous diving facility. So that’s the drawing card. They have a 10-meter tower, a 5-meter tower, two 3-meters – I mean, it’s a diver’s heaven.’

Volovetski isn’t alone inside the pearly gates either. Pittsburgh senior Jeremy Stultz could not make the team’s road trip to St. Bonaventure and Syracuse due to a test Friday and extra school work, but he is arguably just as good if not better than Volovetski. The duo forms the Big East’s top 1-2 punch. Last year, Volovetski had the best 1-meter score in the Big East and Stultz was second. In the 3-meter, they flip-flopped best scores.

‘It’s good having Jeremy on the team because we always compete against each other,’ Volovetski said. ‘He won’t be around next year, but it’s great to have him now.’

With Stultz in Pittsburgh, Volovetski swept the field at St. Bonaventure and Syracuse. He won by an average of 81 points over the four events.

‘It was hard today, especially after going to St. Bonaventure last night,’ he said. ‘It’s not a really great pool to dive in, but we took care of business there. We came back today and did it again.’

The secret to Volovetski’s domination is preparation, something Skuce noticed immediately.

‘He must have done seven jumps in his warm-ups,’ Skuce said. ‘Just jumps. No diving. It’s, ‘I have to be comfortable with this diving board before I do any tricks.’ He didn’t do any of his hard tricks before the meet. He got used to what he had to do to make sure that board worked.

‘A good score is 250 points, and he had 392. He did 3-meter dives in the 1-meter event. Five years ago, you didn’t see that.’

Flirting with 400 takes a combination of factors. Volovetski is in a diving era that plays to his strengths. It’s the perfect storm.

‘Alex has probably been diving since he was five or six, and every day that’s what he does,’ Skuce said. ‘Diving is an art. It’s like an ice skater. You train and build your body specifically for that thing. But also the diving boards have changed. They have evolved tremendously. If you learn the technique and he has it, you can get height that no one else can get.

‘That’s the difference between amateur and professional.’

Published on October 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm