Olympic Hopeful Liva's Path to Trials

Dana Liva steps back up to the 10-meter platform, this time not for the Cardinal and Gold, but for a shot at a spot on Team USA. Liva is no stranger to plunging at a speed of 35 miles per hour from a height comparable to three stories, but never before to the competitive level of the Olympic Trials.

Although the dive from the platform to water takes just over a second, countless factors have played into this moment.

Liva's path to Trials didn't begin with diving, but rather with gymnastics. Once she discovered in her freshman year of high school how the sport of diving combined two of her favorite things, the acrobatics of gymnastics and water, she was set.

The discipline Liva developed a deep passion for was the platform.

"I love it because one, not a lot of people do it so you kind of get to be that person that everybody's like 'Woah, you do that?' but I also love it because it's like gymnastics and it's all about what you can do," Liva said. "It's not like springboard where you have to wait for the board and it helps you do your dive. Tower is all your muscle, it's all your power. You have to do it. You get no help from jumping off the concrete."

Competing in the Olympic Trials became reality over three years ago at the 2018 Big 12 Championships. Liva posted an Olympic Trial qualifying score of 283.40, still the current Iowa State platform school record, and decided it was a once in a lifetime opportunity she had to go for.

In 2018, Liva knew a couple years separated her from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, she could not prepare for a worldwide pandemic halting her dream for an additional year, or possibly ending it.

Diving Coach Jeff Warrick witnessed firsthand both the excitement of achieving the cut score, a first for one of Warrick's divers, and the adversities that went along with not knowing what came next.

"It was pretty disappointing when everything got pushed back," Warrick said. "That made it a real struggle for her. For one she was no longer in school, she needed to get a job and work. In the midst of the pandemic, everybody's shutting down or isolating and limiting pools and usage to certain people, she was pretty much pushed out."

That didn't stop Liva. Nor did the fact that she would be out of the pool from March 2020 until January 2021 or knowing she'd have to find an alternative training facility due to Beyer Hall only being housed with a five-meter platform. Liva continued to press forward.

Liva knew a solution to the latter came at a distance from Ames of 139 miles in Iowa City.

In September of 2020, Liva reached out to both Warrick and Iowa Diving Coach Todd Waikel to inquire about getting back into training. At that point, unknowns prevailed as to making it work for an athlete who, due to the pandemic, exhausted their NCAA eligibility by nearly a year to enter a facility on crackdown to keep their athletes safe.

It took until January of the next year to receive clearance to train on the five-meter at Beyer Pool. When Liva did return to the platform with limited access to facilities, she had ground to cover.

"When she came back she definitely wasn't at the level that she had left at," Warrick said. "She was not ready to go up to the 10-meter. A lot of the things we had done on the five-meter, she had to work up to and regain just to get back to where she was."

Liva started out training with Warrick once a week at Beyer Pool while balancing grad school and serving as a diving coach at Waukee High School. To advance outside of the time allotted at the pool, Liva used diving mats to simulate a dryland facility at her apartment. Along with cardio and weightlifting five times a week, she returned to diving strength while relying on fundamentals to improve to the mental and physical standard the 10-meter requires.

"I had to go back to basics, which people don't understand how important having technique and basics is in diving and making sure they're really, really good and solid," Liva said.

When April of 2021 rolled around, the proper paperwork had been filed and Liva received the all-clear to begin practicing at Iowa. For Liva to be part of Iowa's athletic protocol, she drives to Iowa City either Monday or Tuesday weekly to get COVID tested, then immediately turns around. During this time, Liva ramped up her practice schedule to three times a week on the five-meter in Ames. Once her test returns a negative result, she travels back to Iowa City early Saturday mornings.

Initially returning to the 10-meter was a smooth transition from the five-meter. Liva attributes this to the work put into her dryland training while facilities were shut down.

"It was kind of nice to be able to see the progress from where I was in January to where I am now," Liva said. "Really working on those basics and the lead-ups for 10-meter and making sure those were solid so when I did finally get cleared to go to Iowa and dive 10-meter, it was just nice to be able to roll and crank off some of my optionals without fear of feeling like, 'Oh no my lead-ups weren't very good,' it's like, 'No, my lead-ups are very solid. This dive should go very well.'"

The impact of hitting the water from 10 meters and muscle soreness share a high correlation. During Liva's time at Iowa State, her body was used to practicing towers once a month, so the new once a week schedule rendered a new adjustment period for her body. For recovery, Liva uses a machine at home for her muscles and joints and sees a chiropractor weekly.

An added challenge arose from adhering to Olympic Trial guidelines. Not only do qualifiers have to meet a cut score, they also must have a minimum degree of difficulty for each dive. With this, Liva had to prepare a dive she never previously competitively performed. Warrick states there was an overhanging question mark if she would be successful in the feat, but after a couple months, Liva did just that.

"She never gave up hope," Warrick said. "To do what she's doing with as little training as she's had, to be able to accomplish and come back after being out of the pool for almost a full year before she could really train is a pretty big deal."

Driven is a word Warrick and many would classify Liva as.

"A lot of people wouldn't go through the hassle she's had to go through to make this work, but that's how important it was to her," Warrick said. "I think people have an idea, but a person who's a platform diver obviously has an even better understanding of what she's doing. Just the height, being up there is a scary thing. Not many people stand up there and don't have at least healthy fear."

Liva largely credits her coaches, Warrick and Waikel, for the time and effort put into the process of sending her to Trials. The magnitude of sending someone to Olympic Trials is no small matter and Liva feels immense gratitude towards the people who have helped her along the way and for this opportunity.

"It really means everything to me because it is so hard to qualify for Olympic Trials in diving," Liva said. "Because I qualified, it just means the world knowing there is so few people that even get a chance to do it, and I'm one of those people. Words can't even describe how awesome it is."

Olympic Hopeful Liva's Path to Trials

Players Mentioned

Dana Liva

Sponsors

Iowa State University Athletics

Olympic Hopeful Liva's Path to Trials

Related News

Players Mentioned

Dana Liva

Related Videos

Sponsors