Rice Will Bring Back Its Diving Program After 33-Year Hiatus

Rice University is reviving its women’s diving program for the 2024-2025 academic year, the school announce on Tuesday, which will reunite swimming & diving moving forward.

From 1975 through 1991, Rice sponsored a women’s swimming & diving team, but the diving program was eventually discontinued when the NCAA changed the specifications for diving facilities in member pools.

In 2009, though, Rice opened a new pool that included 1-meter and 3-meter diving boards at one end of its 50 meter course. That new pool is within NCAA specifications and will allow the Owls to bring back diving, which has hamstrung the program in recent seasons.

Rice has had the top-scoring swimming team in their conference several times in recent years, including last year when they made their debut in the AAC. But 0 diving points have made it hard to come up with conference team titles, especially in a conference with two very good diving programs in Houston and Florida International

Last year’s conference champions from the University of Houston scored 369 diving points and 942.5 swimming points, while Rice score 1,136 swimming points and 0 diving points.

While there is some tradeoff with resources committed to swimming versus diving, having 0 points in the latter in a conference where 24 scored among 27 divers entered is a huge uphill climb.

2023 AAC Scoring Breakdown

Courtesy: Andrew Mering. See more here.

“Year after year, our swimmers have produced championship-caliber results and countless event champions, but the lack of diving points has prevented them from standing at the top of the podium as a team,” said Director of Athletics Tommy McClelland. “We are committed to winning our conference in every sport, and the return of the diving team is a vital step forward.

“The Olympic Games have always been a showcase for the sports of swimming and diving, and what better way to build off of that interest of this summer’s games in Paris than with the return of diving to Rice in the fall?” McClelland added.

Rice is a private NCAA Division I university located in Houston, Texas. It is the 5th-smallest school by enrollment in the Football Bowl Subdivision. It is one of the top universities in the United States academically, ranked #17 in US News’ National Universities ranking.

Houston is a national hotbed for diving: the school is located just a few miles away from the University of Houston, which has been one of the country’s best diving programs for decades, and The Woodlands Diving Academy in the city’s northern suburbs has trained several Olympians. Among the top divers in US history from Houston include 2000 Olympic gold medalist Laura Wilkinson and three-time World Diver of the Year, and the television voice of diving in the United States, Cynthia Potter. Two of the world’s top diving coaches, Dave Parrington and Jane Figueroda, also trained in college at the University of Houston.