Stultz dives to bright future

Name: Jeremy Stultz Sport: Diving Birthday: Aug. 30, 1985 Class: Junior Major: Pharmacy… Name: Jeremy Stultz Sport: Diving Birthday: Aug. 30, 1985 Class: Junior Major: Pharmacy Favorite sport outside of diving: Baseball

On a hot August afternoon in nearby Kennywood Park, teenagers in packs and families with children holding ice cream gather to watch the show. Jeremy Stultz scales the ladder onto the 50-foot platform for the high dive. The crowd inhales. Stultz leaps from the platform, arms flailing, and smacks into the pool below with a large splash. The crowd laughs at his clown-like maneuvers. A few seconds later, Stultz rises to the surface and deftly swims to the side of the pool. Then, with a smile, he jogs back to the ladder to do it again.

It’s now March. Stultz stands on a different board inside Pitt’s Trees Pool, ready to perform with a lot more concentration than he did at his summer job in Kennywood. The smell of chlorine is heavy in the air, and Stultz is standing calmly on a 3-meter board above a pool that is 16 feet deep. He approaches the end of the tottering board and turns around, raising his arms. He’s about to perform a dive in which he’ll jump backward off the board, doing two and a half somersaults before hitting the water. If he’s feeling up for it, he’ll add a twist or two.

After that dive, he walks over to the television in the corner to watch the recording of what he just did. After three near-perfect dives, there’s not a lot of need for improvement. Stultz’s coach describes him as a perfectionist, though, and after studying the video, Stultz heads back to the board.

Pitt diving coach Julian Krug has known Stultz for a long time. Stultz gave up swimming at age 12 and became involved in Krug’s junior diving program at Pitt, performing his first somersault off of the board in Trees Pool.

“I’ve had him for nine years, and he’s never been in another program,” Krug said proudly. “It’s neat to have a kid come up and do that well.”

Stultz has had a great career so far. He was named the 2006 Big East Diver of the Year after winning his second consecutive Big East title on the 3-meter board. He also won the Junior National Competition on both 1-meter and 3-meter boards in 2004.

On March 16, Stultz won seventh place in the NCAA Championships, earning him All-America honors in the 3-meter. Krug promised Stultz that if he placed highly in that competition, he would shave his head. Luckily, he says, his hair is growing back.

“Accomplishing All-American was pretty crazy,” Stultz said. “I was really happy to get it. That was my goal at the beginning of the year, so that was very exciting.”

On April 14, he’ll compete in the Spring Nationals in Bethesda, Md. He made sure he and Krug had a plan to allow him to get back for his classes so he won’t miss the week before finals.

Krug noted that Stultz knows how to balance his demanding pharmacy classes with his diving success.

“I hang my hat on my measure of success by where my kids are 10 years from now,” Krug said. “I’m very comfortable that Jeremy will be out in the world with a pharmacy degree or whatever else he wants to be, and he’ll be constructive. In that sense he’s a winner.

“He’s the opposite of what we’d call a diving bum,” Krug continued. “He’s going to go out in the world and be very competent and be OK. Some divers don’t know how to do anything else, and they stick around in diving because they don’t have any other options. But Jeremy is going to continue and train and get better.

“His goal isn’t to be the best in the world, that doesn’t fit,” Krug noted. “But he’s going to be the best he can in the time he has and certainly represent Pitt well every which way he can represent Pitt well – student, athlete, you name it.”

Stultz will compete in the 1-meter and 3-meter preliminaries at Spring Nationals. If he qualifies, he’ll move onto the semi-finals, and from there he has a chance to make it to the World University Games, held in Bangkok, Thailand, this July.

“My goal is coming in more to qualify for the Olympic trials,” Stultz said. “The Olympics are probably not going to happen, but even if I could go to trials that’d be awesome.”

If not, as Krug assures, he still has a bright future ahead of him.