Many athletes dream of making a big splash when they compete. Addison Peart doesn’t follow that trend. The record-setting senior diver for the Riverton Lady Wolverines works to do just the opposite, to make as small a splash as possible off the one-meter diving board.
As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of diving realizes after watching it in the Olympics, that minimal splash can make a big difference in the scores of the five judges at poolside.
Addison has been swimming for a long time; two-thirds of her life has been spent in or slightly above the pool.
“I started swimming when I was about five or six. I’ve been in it for about 12 years now,” Addison said. “I picked up diving during my 6th-grade year.”
She began swimming in kindergarten with the USA Swimming program, then moved to the Riverton Middle School team in her early teenage years.
Swimming is a difficult, challenging sport, an individual sport where there is no one to blame but yourself for a poor performance. It takes the same mental toughness that cross country, track and field and wrestling require.
Diving appealed to Addison.
“It just looked fun and I’d been swimming for so long that I wanted to try something new,” Addison said. “My mom was friends with the dive coach, so I thought why not?”
Dives can be spectacular, disastrous, or most often something between those two extremes.
Addison competed well from the beginning.
“My first dives weren’t the prettiest, but they were scoreable for the most part,” she said.
Her favorite dive is the reverse pike.
“I just feel like I have the hang of it, I’m very confident in it, and it’s fun to do,” Addison said.
Adding to the challenge, and the pride in her sport, she didn’t have a coach this season.
“I do what I want to do at practice. I don’t have a coach this year,” Addison said. “I feel like I’m not performing for a coach, I feel like I’m doing it for myself. Picking my own workouts is nice.”
A driving force for Addison, at least to begin her senior year, was her mother, Claire.
“Mom is the one that pushed me this year; I wasn’t going to dive this year, then the first day of the season I decided to do it,” Addison said.
Training without a coach in a sport as technical as the one-meter dive would have been impossible a generation ago, but Addison has found help in the digital realm.
“Mostly it was just me and YouTube videos for most of the season,” Addison said. “There are so many videos, it’s wonderful, it covers so much, from the basics to the hard stuff.”
Her entire high school career has been a series of hurdles just to reach the board in a meet.
Riverton didn’t have a diving team in her freshman year, so she swam.
She did get help from Riverton Middle School coach, and Wolverine dive coach, Chad Lemley, and Andrea Spriggs, her high school coach for a couple of years.
“I want to thank my mom and Chad Lemley,” Addison said. “My mom has pushed me to keep in the sport. Chad was a great coach. Andrea Spriggs taught me a lot, even when she was hard, she taught me a lot of new dives.”
Addison also competes in the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard backstroke.
“I didn’t qualify in either one,” Addison said. “I’m just going to dive at state. It’s a pain to change into tech suits anyway.”
Addison competes for the Wolverine Track team in the spring and enjoys sprinting the 200-meter dash.
She works as a lifeguard at the Riverton Aquatic Center and is a popular swimming instructor to many youngsters in the summer.
She carries a 3.65 grade point average and is a member of the Riverton High School National Honor Society. She also tutors other students.
“I’m just a student. I help out with a few volunteer activities and do some after-school tutoring,” Addison said.
She has applied to the University of Wyoming, where she plans to major in elementary education.
“I applied for the honors program at UW,” Addison said.
Her choice of a career in early childhood education matches the skills she displays as a swimming instructor. Patience, perseverance, and a positive attitude with her often nervous swimmers.
“I’m hoping to teach kindergarten,” Addison said. “I just really enjoy the younger kids.”
Sometime this summer, the name Addison Peart will appear on the north wall of the Riverton Aquatic Center with both the Riverton High School and the Riverton Pool record in the one-meter, 11-dive. Her score of 383.55 is impressive.
She has one more meet to go in Laramie this weekend in the Class 4-A State Championships.
“It’s been a great year,” Addison said. “Honestly, all of my past coaches, I can compile all the things they taught me and use bits and pieces of everything.”
Those bits and pieces add up in the most technical sport a high school athlete can compete in.