For nearly her entire life, Kimmy Vitek ‘15 was a gymnast. That is, until freshman year when an elbow injury subsequently ruined her career in gymnastics. With nothing much left, she decided to try diving and four years later, she finds herself prepared to go to Cornell University to continue this sport at a collegiate level.
After being an extremely driven gymnast who would leave school everyday to practice for two and a half hours as a freshman, Vitek chose to transfer over to diving as it shares similarities with gymnastics.

“At first I was just doing it as a ‘lets give something a try’ because I didn’t really have anything after gymnastics,” Vitek said. “I guess I just fell in love with the acrobatic part and it doesn’t hurt my elbow and it’s just perfect for me.”

Kelly Ryser ‘15, a fellow diver as well as a gymnast, can clearly relate the two sports.

“It is acrobatic and with gymnastics you get a huge advantage with your air awareness which you don’t get with a lot of other sports,” Ryser said. “You need to know where your body is in the air.”

As a captain and a leader on the team, Vitek has tried to bring the swim and dive team closer, which has been a struggle in the past as they are two completely different sports that compete together. Many of her leadership skills come from the J. Kyle Braid Leadership Foundation (JKB), which is a camp in Colorado that teaches high schoolers leadership so they reach out to other teens.

“[JKB] gave me a lot of leadership skills” Vitek said. “Learning how to be a leader helped me get that position as a captain and be good at it.”
Vitek received various offers from colleges to dive, which included University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, Brown University, Tufts University and Cornell University, three of which are Ivy League schools. It was mainly between Cornell and Pennsylvania and after she visited and liked the campus, she made her choice to attend Cornell, Vitek said.

“[Cornell] is a competitive team and Kimmy’s a very hard worker,” Coach Christy Williams said. “She dives even better when she’s with better divers so I think she’ll rise to the occasion, be focused and perform well.”

As she prepares to attend Cornell, Vitek plans on being able to adapt to the difficulties of being a student-athlete along with her fellow divers. Along with practicing six days a week for three hours, Vitek will have dry lands and weights three days a week keeping her busy.

“It’s definitely going to be hard [being a student athlete] with Cornell’s academics,” Vitek said. “It’s not going to be an easy place, but I think that since everyone there is going to be doing the same thing, I’ll be able to feed off that and figure it out pretty quickly.”

Over the span of these last three years, Vitek has not only progressed as a teammate but also as a diver and a competitor. A huge part of being a good diver is the mental aspect of it. It’s vital to not get down after having a bad dive or a bad meet as it can impact the rest of your dives, according to Williams.

“I’ve seen her mentally progress by getting up there with a lot more confidence and experience and believing in herself,” Williams said. “Nerves got the best of her. Now she’s been in bigger meets and gotten experience. I can tell when she gets up there and feels more confident.”

After placing second in conference this year, the diving team performd in preliminaries and semifinals Nov. 21 at Evanston High School. They advanced and went on to finals on Nov. 22. After qualifying, Vitek placed eighth in the individual state competition with a score of 298.60. Her teammate Ryser placed just two spots behind her with a score of 281.00.

“Overall, I was content with my performance,” Vitek said. “During preliminaries, I dove very consistently and was fourth going into finals. I messed up on my 2.5 somersault a little in finals which put me in eigth. I wish I could have hit that dive, but overall I was proud of how far I had come. Our hard work really did pay off.”