Dusel Deftly Balancing Schoolwork and Diving
By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
CHARLOTTESVILLE– Students in the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce not only attend classes, they work on projects in small groups that set their own meeting times.
Early in the semester, when one of the members in her group suggested an 11 p.m. meeting, Sydney Dusel had to interject.
“I let them know that I practice at 6 a.m.,” Dusel recalled with a smile.
A junior from the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Ill., Dusel is also a standout diver at UVA. Balancing the obligations of a Comm School student with those of a varsity athlete are not easy, but Dusel’s classmates have been accommodating.
“They’re really awesome about it,” she said. “Now we meet way earlier, and they really respect my [schedule].”
Dusel grew up in a family in which athletic prowess was common. Her parents attended Western Illinois, where her dad wrestled and her mother was a gymnast, and there are former wrestlers in Dusel’s extended family, too.
As a girl, she competed in gymnastics for a decade, starting when she was 3 years old. Dusel, who stands 5-7, devoted about 25 hours a week to the sport, she said, “but then I injured my back and was kind of getting too tall.”
Her mother and her brother had been divers in high school, and Dusel decided to follow their lead. She started diving as an eighth-grader, she said, and by the time she reached high school that was her primary passion in athletics.
A two-time state champion and a high school All-American, Dusel attracted interested from Division I programs, including UVA. But she knew little about the school before Jason Glorius, then the Cavaliers’ diving coach, began recruiting her.
“I looked it up,” she said. “Great school. Great team.”
Dusel took official visits to Notre Dame and Michigan before touring UVA early in her senior year at Naperville Central High School.
“I wasn’t really excited about Notre Dame or Michigan,” she said. “When I came to UVA, I was not sure what to expect.”
Her host was diver Kylie Towbin, who’s now Dusel’s best friend.
“She made the trip amazing,” Dusel said, “and I came back and I was like, ‘I know I’m going there.’ It was just the whole team dynamic. The boys and girls teams were one team, the divers and swimmers were one team, and the school was beautiful. I was totally sold.”
During Dusel’s freshman year at UVA, Augie Busch was head coach of its swimming & diving programs. Busch left in July 2017 for the University of Arizona, and Virginia hired Todd DeSorbo as his successor later that summer.
Glorius continued as the Wahoos’ diving coach in 2017-18. Drew Livingston moved into that position this summer, and he’s optimistic about the program’s potential.
“Over the last five or six years, Virginia has definitely come a long way [in diving], just in the type of talent we’ve been able to attract,” said Livingston, former head coach at Princeton. “There are some kids on the team right now that should expect to score at NCAA that just haven’t yet.”
Those divers include Dusel and Towbin, who holds program records in the 3-meter dive and platform. Dusel ranks first all-time in the 1-meter dive.
“I think it’s been really good,” Dusel said of the coaching change. “Drew’s really good at focusing on the small details. Like he’ll bring his phone out and video our dives and then call us over [to review them in] slo-mo, because a lot of times in diving you do something and don’t really realize that you’re making that mistake until you see it.
“Another thing he’s really good at is preparing you mentally and [stressing the importance of] a positive attitude, which is a huge part of diving, because a lot of it is mental.”
Virginia’s divers have competed twice this season. In an Oct. 6 dual meet against Penn State at the Aquatic and Fitness Center, Dusel swept the women’s 1-meter and 3-meter dives.
Last weekend, at the SMU Classic in Dallas, Dusel won the 3-meter and placed second off the 1-meter board, a performance for which she was named ACC Diver of the Week.
“Her performances in the first two meets haven’t surprised me, for two reasons,” Livingston said.
When he arrived at UVA, Livingston said, Dusel already was in Charlottesville and “had been staying in shape and working hard throughout the summer. So at no point has she had to play catch-up. She was ready to go by the time I got here.”
Second, he said, Dusel is “very consistent in her training, and when she comes in every day – it doesn’t matter if it’s the first day of the week or the last — I know what I’m going to get out of her in terms of how hard she works and the mentality she approaches each practice with.”
Dusel’s offseason training “put her in a really good position now to do some really good things early in the year,” Livingston said, “and having those successes early in the year should help her build some confidence as we get into the more important months of February and March.”
At the college level, divers compete on the 1-meter and 3-meter springboards and from platforms, for which there are three heights: 5-meter, 7-meter and 10-meter.
At the AFC, the home of UVA swimming & diving, the platform is 5 meters high, but that’s not unusual for college programs.
“I think in a perfect world,” Livingston said, “you would have had a full set of platforms, so it’s easy and convenient. With that being said, it’s [possible] to develop a creative training program which gets you better on platform without necessarily having access [to 7- and 10-meter platforms] all the time.”
“A good example: In the last 10 years, I think there have been three different NCAA champions on the women’s side on 10 meters that haven’t had daily access to a full set of platforms. So it’s not impossible to do really good things; you just have to be creative and develop a plan around the facility you have.”
Dusel dived off the 1-meter board as an eighth-grader and a ninth-grader. She added the 3-meter board as a 10th-grader, she said. “I didn’t really start doing platform until college.”
She dives off the 7- and 10-meter platforms at the ACC and NCAA meets. To prepare for, say, a front three-and-a-half dive off the 10-meter platform, Dusel said, she’ll practice a front two-and-a-half dive off the 5-meter platform.
“Of course, it’s not exactly the same,” she said, “but there’s no other way to prepare.”
As a freshman, she did her platform dives off the 7-meter board. “Last year I did my first real 10-meter dive,” Dusel said, “and that was a front three-and-a-half.”
When she arrived at UVA in the summer of 2016, Dusel had only jumped off a 10-meter platform. Diving tested her nerve.
“I’m not really afraid of heights, but I would say 10-meter for sure gives you a thrill,” Dusel said, smiling. “It’s scary.”
Dusel said her mentor at UVA, athletically and academically, has been Towbin, a senior from New Canaan, Conn. Towbin, who preceded Dusel in the Comm School, returned the compliment.
“I think Sydney has both the drive and the dedication to achieve whatever she puts her mind to,” Towbin said. “She is always in good spirits, no matter the circumstance. Her attitude and natural athletic ability are the perfect combination for success.
“In the classroom she is just as dedicated. Her study schedule is rigorous, and she’s very well-organized. Both in and out of the classroom Sydney is an inspiration for me.”
Dusel is one of three current UVA student-athletes from Naperville Central High, along with Alissa Gorzak (women’s soccer) and Jake Keating (wrestling). Given that Naperville is about 760 miles from Charlottesville, Dusel said, “it’s kind of crazy.”
At the NCAA championships, Dusel finished 21stin the 3-meter dive, 24thin the platform, and 36thin the 1-meter last season. The top 16 finishers in each event score points for their schools.
For the Cavaliers’ top divers, that’s “the goal this year, for sure,” Livingston said. “We’ve just got to put in the work in October and November and December to put ourselves in a good situation in February and March to make it happen.”
Dusel is focused on the process, she said. “My big thing is, I don’t like to say, ‘I want to get this place at NCAAs or ACCs.’ My mindset is that I can’t control what the other divers are doing, but I want to do every single dive the way I know how to and the way I can, and then we’ll see what place I can fall into.
“But based on my performance last year, and [the fact that] I’m increasingly getting a lot better in my scores this year, I think that I have a lot of potential to score a lot of points.”
UVA hosts Pittsburgh in an ACC dual meet Saturday at the AFC. Diving starts at 9 a.m. and swimming at noon.