By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
The Community Park diving team finished .500 in the regular season, but enjoyed their best day of the season when it mattered most.
The Bluefish rode strong individual performances across the board to the team title at the recent Princeton Area Swimming and Diving Association Championships.
“We have incredible faith in the kids and their abilities,” said Nicole Arioso, one of CP’s diving coaches along with Cathy Mallon. “It’s really a matter of having them take the courage to believe in themselves to do it.”
Community Park scored 416 points to top runner-up West Windsor, which scored 343. Lawrenceville had 303. Nassau took fourth with 214 points.
“We haven’t won in several years,” said 18-year-old Jasmine Horan. “I do remember when we won. It might have been five years ago. That’s when our team was big. Over the last couple years, we had smaller teams.
“I just know our team brought in a lot of trophies. That’s a lot of points. The small amount of divers we had, they did great and did their job and got us a lot of points.”
Horan was one of six division winners from CP. Horan won the 18-and-under girls open division with a score of 258.95. Teammate Zayna Khan placed second with 248.35. Horan was second in the 18-and-under division.
“It was obviously extra emotional for me because it was the last time,” said Horan, a Princeton High School graduate who will dive at Amherst College next year. “I wanted to win personally and I thought it was great if the team could win too. It was my last chance to win; me and my team. It ended up working out. It couldn’t have been a better end to my time with the Bluefish.”
It may only be the end as a diver. She would like to stay close to a team that has meant so much and sent her out as a winner.
“At practices, I had to step up and teach the new divers the hurdles and give them tips,” Horan said. “I’m considering applying to be a coach next year. I’d love to stick with it. It’s a great way to stay connected. I have a lot of experience with summer diving. I’m going to continue to do it in college and I’ll continue to learn at Amherst and I’d hope I could teach the kids some things next summer.”
There are plenty of strong younger divers returning. Skyler Galatro won and Piper Dubow was third in the 10-and-under girls, Lizzy Hare won the 12-and-under girls, Carolyn Maslanka won and Khan was second in the 14-and-under girls, Timmy Soron won the 8-and-under boys and Steve (Take) Numata won the 18-and-under boys and was second in 18-and-under boys open. No other CP diver finished in the top three in any division.
“A few of them learned the dives that week and were perfecting them the day before and the day of,” Arioso said. “There were a bunch of dives they hadn’t done before. They needed the dives to compete and they got the job done.”
Numata is another Princeton High graduate, and after a successful summer he is hopeful that he can pursue diving at Rowan University along with his electrical engineering studies.
“I thought it was a nice way to leave off,” Numata said. “In the 18 open, I got beat by this one guy who’s really good, but it’s fun to watch. I always like watching the good divers more than winning, but winning is nice too.”
Numata started diving when he was 8 and was serious enough about it to join the Blue Dolphins club team that dives year-round. But after a few years, he stopped to concentrate on swimming. This summer, at the urging of Mallon, he returned to diving for his final year with CP.
“It came back pretty quickly, which was lucky,” Numata said. “I think it’s one of those sports where you can stop for a decade and get back in after a day.”
Mallon was also flexible with practices. Numata had to start a summer job early in the morning, and Mallon would come a half-hour early to work with him so he could get to his job.
“This was her own time,” said Numata, who also credited another assistant, Collin McManus, with helping him perfect his dives. “That was a fair portion of my practice right there. I could dive and get right back on the board and go again.”
Adam Inbar also helped to develop the Bluefish divers. Numata liked how the coaches were able to spread their focus to all the different divers. Their attention toward him paid off in the end when the boys ranks were thinned by injury and vacation commitments, and they needed Numata to come up big in the championship.
“Take, he really pulled through for us in 18-and-under,” Horan said. “He got first in 18-and-under boys and second in 18 open. That was big.”
Soron was the only other male winner for CP. The 9-year-old will be moving up a division next year after enjoying quite a debut season.
“This is my first year on the team, but I’ve done diving practice for three years now,” said Soron who is going into fourth grade at Montgomery. “I started liking diving a lot in the second year. I wanted to do diving in the summer. My mom signed me up for the swim team so I did both.”
Soron prefers the greater variety of dives to the four swim strokes. He scored his best on his tuck and his front jump, and he will be looking to add more difficult dives in the next year. It helps that he has some gymnastics training.
“I did gymnastics camp last year and I’m doing one this year,” Soron said. “I think it gives you balance when you’re doing it. On the parallel bars, you’re up high, so you’re used to it.”
Soron would like to get used to winning. This year was a bit of a surprise for him, and for the team. Soron hadn’t expected to hear his name at the top of his division, and he wasn’t sure he’d hear Community Park’s name either.
“Not really because the other teams, I thought they were doing better than us,” he said. “They had the higher points, but they had the lower difficulty.”
Maslanka is new to diving too, but she comes with a strong background in gymnastics.
“It was a lot easier to understand the concept,” Maslanka said. “It was easy to learn how to twist and flip. The only difference is you have to be more graceful and let the board do the work for you whereas in gymnastics you’re doing all the work.”
She has been a gymnast since she was 3, but has started to turn toward following her brother, Mark, a diver at Rider University. Her younger sister, Sarah, is more of a swimmer.
“I did swimming last year but this year I focused on diving,” said Carolyn said. “I’m trying to balance between diving and gymnastics. I know pretty soon I’ll have to make a choice.”
Maslanka will be a freshman at Montgomery High, and she is leaning toward diving. Her success this summer has helped to reassure her of her potential, and she is looking to the future.
“I look up to (Mark) for advice,” she said. “I ask him what he would do in this situation, what he thinks I should do. I think because he does diving in college and I see how much fun he has and how much he likes it, I’ll probably do it too.”
Like Maslanka, Lizzy Hare is another of CP’s winners who had to add dives in the final week of preparation. It helped the 12-year-old who will be in eighth grade at Princeton Charter School to move up from a second-place tie a year ago to first.
“I learned three dives in the last week,” Hare said. “Some of the dives I’ve done before but I was scared about because they are more difficult dives. They were more that they had a high DD, something you multiply the score by.”
Hare was able to learn the dives and use them to help the Bluefish win the team title, something that no one was sure would happen before the competition began.
“I missed two weeks so I only had one meet to prepare before the championship,” Hare said. “I had no idea how the team was doing until I got back. We lost two meets, and probably thought we were going to fourth.”
CP took fourth a year ago at the PASDA Championships, but showed its strength to vault to the top this year.
“We were gifted with the kids doing a lot of hard work this season,” Arioso said. “They worked hard. We have a lot of gymnasts. We have a lot of fun.
“The regular season was good. I believe we only won two of them, so going into it we had no intentions of making a sweeping win. We were hopeful, but it was not our goal.
