A University of Florida student, Emma Whitner is pursuing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. Emma Whitner is a diver on UF’s women’s swimming and diving team, which competes at the NCAA Division I level.
While swimming and diving are distinctly different aquatic sports, their tournaments have been combined since the beginnings of the NCAA championships. Doing so reduces the costs that would otherwise be incurred if they were held as separate events. Many college teams also consolidate their swimmers and divers into a single team. However, within that framework, the two sports differ greatly in terms of assessment structure and participation.
Pace, or how fast a swimmer moves between two points of the pool, provides the scoring parameters for the NCAA swimming events. For diving, scoring depends on accomplished moves, or the acrobatics the diver performs during their turn. Due to this, diving is more subjective when it comes to assessment. In addition, NCAA diving rosters are considerably smaller and have fewer events in contrast to swimming. The number of divers, or pools, that takes part in each diving session tends to be smaller too. Having fewer divers on teams and in tournaments is another reason for the rarity of events that are exclusively for diving.
