Twenty-five feet in the air, with all eyes on her, Geneva Kasziba ’26 gets ready to dive. She flips through the air, flawlessly executing her routine. As she makes contact with the pool water, she makes a splash barely noticeable to onlookers. The judges, impressed with her performance, raise their scorecard and give her a “10.”

The PHS diving team was established this year when divers Kasziba and Alyce Baird ’26 wanted to compete outside of their club team practices. Both divers, with the help of the athletic director, were the driving forces behind the creation of the PHS diving team.

“We decided that we wanted to start diving for school and we reached out to the athletic director,” said Kasziba. “The school basically sponsors us to go ... and we represent the school ... against other schools in competitions.”

While Kasziba and Baird both dive for a club team outside of school, the new PHS diving team opens

new doors that they previously couldn’t have, such as competing in this year’s state diving competition.

The New Jersey state diving competition took place at Montgomery High School on February 28th. Prior to this, Baird and Kasziba qualified for states through other school competitions. At Montgomery, Baird and Kasziba placed seventh and seventeenth respectively. This was a major accomplishment for the two, as they were competing with the best divers in the state.

Supervising the divers at competitions is PHS History Teacher and Diving Team Advisor Rick Miller, who’s son is on the same club diving team as Baird and Kasziba. Naturally, he decided to take up the offer to become the diving coach; it was easy to supervise

the team while watching his son dive. While the divers make it look easy, the small margins and skill

required to pull off each routine highlight the difficulty of the sport. “It’s called a back and a half,” said Kasziba, when asked about one of her favorite dives. “So you do a backflip, and then you basically go in with your hands.” This complicated dive involves a lot of balance

and precision; one miscalculation could end up creating a huge splash.

The season came to a close with successful results from both athletes, and the future of both divers looks extremely bright.

“Both divers [are] very impressive,” said Miller. “As PHS freshmen,

they have many years of diving success ahead of them.”