by Kate Smart

At the age of 21, Californian Jack Taylor may have arrived fairly late to the sport of diving, but that hasn’t stopped him from carving out a successful international coaching career.

Jack’s first foray into diving came via a mate’s apartment pool complex by gathering benches around the pool and doing backflips. From here he entered local and university competitions before grasping the opportunity to set up shop as a coach.

With his love of the sport firmly in place, the opportunity to head to New Zealand as a professional coach was an adventure too good to pass up. Four years later, he returned to North America, this time to Canada before trading sub-zero temperatures for the warmer climate of the Gold Coast.

Five years later he moved west to Perth and spent five years in the role of National Talent Identification Coach. Now approaching his third year with Diving Victoria, Taylor is working with Victorian divers aged 13-15.

Coaching aspiring divers is not without its challenges, and he says it’s working with individual personalities that are one of the trickiest parts of the job.

“Learning to understand the individuals and making sure you are as effective as you can be in each particular instance, that’s the trickiest bit.”

“The technical end of it, the writing the programs… you can read a book about that and maybe use a little bit of creativity. But when it comes to working with individuals, that’s where the real art of it comes into play,” he says.

Australia has a long history of success in water sports, especially with a strong culture of children learning to swim. As Taylor points out, “swimming is ok, but diving is exciting. Diving is water with a lot more interesting stuff going on.”

“It’s hard but it’s really fun. You can do it for fun and for competition but not completely devote your life to it or if you want to go to the Olympics, Australia has been reasonably successful.”

Another advantage of following a path into diving is that the size of the programs allows for talent to be spotted easily.

“You’re getting more focused attention and if you’ve got ability it’s really going to be seen. You won’t be hidden or missed because there’s not 15,000 kids in the program; there’s a couple hundred across the country.”

However, according to Taylor, this is only the surface of diving. Its real advantage lies in the life skills it gives divers.

“To me, the life qualities it develops is probably the most important thing. Because of the unique nature of our sport, there’s danger, it’s difficult, it requires self-sacrifice, dedication, and discipline. All of these things are life lessons. These are the things (the kids) potentially take away from it and become better people. That to me is the real selling point.”

It’s this path to becoming a well-rounded individual that is clearly a motivator for Taylor. This path is not played out solely in the water, however. With large amounts of time spent working on dry land training, Taylor’s group of young divers train for 25 hours a week during the school term and around 27 hours a week in the school holidays. 

With these sorts of hours spent in training, Taylor offers some valuable advice for young divers.

“Trust your coach and do what they ask. You trust that your coach has a plan that is going to get the best out of you. Then what you do is you follow that plan the best you can.“

“Make sure you understand what’s being asked and take as much ownership of that as possible and don’t just be a passenger. Get involved, understand why things are happening and get to the point where you’re an active participant in your program.”