River Falls Wildcat swimmer Rachel Everson took first place at sectionals on Friday and will advance to the state tournament in Waukesha this weekend.

Senior Everson has been something of a prodigy ever since she started diving, which was only three seasons ago. Since then, she’s set multiple school records, got a full scholarship to UW Green Bay as a D1 diver and will compete for her second straight year at state.

“I got 11^th in the state last year. They have different cuts for scores, and I made all the cuts, which I'm super happy about,” Everson said. “A lot of the other divers were seniors though, so hopefully I can do better this year.”

Believe it or not, a diver with this much prowess is actually something of a novice.

“I started my sophomore year, so I've only been doing it for three seasons, but I picked it up really fast. I learned all the main dives in less than a week. It was like three days,” Everson said. “It kind of depends on the dive. Sometimes it'll take like a day, and then sometimes it'll take two weeks. Like there's this new one I'm learning, the inward double, which is where you're throwing towards the board, and you do two flips. That one I don't really have down, and I'd say it's taken probably like a month to learn.”

In diving, throwing is the motion of your arms going forward to initiate rotation on a dive. Throwing towards the board just means she’s standing on the end facing away from the water and rotating forward towards the diving board.

Considering it’s only been a little over two years since she started as a sophomore, it begs the question of how she was able to achieve such a meteoric rise. As you might imagine, it takes practice.

“I do like 200 to 500 dives a week. It’s probably around 10 hours, but I do some out of diving work too, like going to the gym and gymnastics practice. Gymnastics helps a lot with diving,” Everson said. “Swimming is more of an endurance sport and could be compared to cross-country. Diving is more skill based, and it links closer to gymnastics comparatively. It's a little different, but it’s the same mechanics.”

The link to gymnastics is the important part here as Everson has been doing gymnastics for almost 10 years. In fact, the coaches recruited her from the gymnastics team, which is a very common practice because of the similar skill set. She says this background helps with the mental aspect of competitions as well as training.

“The instant feedback of being rated by judges is very weird. I think I've been conditioned to get used to it because I've been doing gymnastics since the third grade and getting judged,” Everson said. “At first, I used to immediately stare at them to see my scores, but now I've just kind of like just numb it out and focus on the next dive rather than getting hung up on the scores.”

Not getting hung up on scores has got to be a lot easier when those scores are consistently of an elite caliber.

Everson almost broke her own record at sectionals on Friday but missed it because the wrong dive was called when she was on the board. Apparently, since she was already in the dive stance when she stopped and corrected the judge, this resulted in a failed dive. She took it in stride though.

“Last year, I broke the 11-dive school record here at sectionals. I would have broken it again tonight if I wouldn't have gotten that fail, which I'm a little salty about, but it's okay. Then I broke the six-dive record at our last six-dive during our last home meet this year, and I was so happy with that,” Everson said. “It's too bad about the record tonight, but I'm glad I got first though. I just wanted to go to state.”

Diving isn’t the only all-conference achievement Everson has received either. Last year, she received all-conference, all-section and all-state academic honors, she just got her all-conference academic recognition for this year. This basically means that your GPA makes the cut for the top percentage for your conference, section or state.

Wildcats Head Coach Brady Sievers believes that Everson controls her own destiny in Waukesha this year. With another year under her belt, combined with her high level of skill and a number of the top divers from last year having graduated, he thinks it’ll come down to her own performance, not the performance of the field.

“My confidence in her is high. She could place top five if she has a really good meet, and that’ll just be depending on how good she does,” Sievers said. “Last year she got 11^th, but there were six seniors above her in that competition.”

Like any good competitor, Everson is looking forward to the challenge.

“I'm feeling pretty good. Honestly, after going against the same people all year, I think it'll be really cool to see a really high level of competition, especially because a lot of the girls do club diving where they might be like going for the Olympics or training for Big 10 competition,” Everson said. “I don't do club diving because I do gymnastics in the offseason. I'm really excited, though, and I'm feeling pretty confident.”

With how successful she’s been, Sievers said they aren’t going to do anything different in this week’s training before the biggest competition of Everson’s career.

“When it comes to the championship meets, you don't want to overanalyze things or get them in their head. So this week, we’ll just work on mostly the same dives she's been doing, just to get her confidence up,” Sievers said. “We'll play around with things on Monday and Tuesday, maybe we’ll throw a dive in her list that would give her more difficulty so she could score higher if she does well, but by Wednesday, we'll know for sure what dives she's going to do at state.”

The state competition next weekend in Waukesha will mark the end of an era for one of the most prolific divers River Falls has ever had.

“I technically joined really late, but I'm so glad I did. I know what I'm doing now with college and with the scholarship and everything, so I'm just super happy that it all happened,” Everson said. “Totally worth it, highly recommend.”