Nicole Malena Photography
Maple Bluff’s Molly Conroy at the 2016 All-City Dive Meet.
As a prelude to the always-popular, ever-chaotic All-City Swim Meet, the All-City Dive Meet will make a quieter but no less impressive splash at the Monona Pool on July 24 and 25.
“This is kind of the warm-up act,” says Phil McDade, co-director of the dive meet and secretary of the Monona Swim & Dive Club, which will host the meet. About 300 divers, ages 19 and under — some of whom travel to Milwaukee for year-round training — are expected to compete.
By comparison, the All-City Swim Meet, scheduled for July 27-29 at Maple Bluff Country Club, will feature more than 2,000 competitors from the Greater Madison area. All-City officials say it is one of the largest outdoor amateur swim meets in the United States. (Monona will host the All-City Swim Meet next summer.)
All-City divers can choose from five basic groups of dives: forward, backward, reverse, inward and twist. Divers 10 and under will make three preliminary dives; those 11 and older will make four preliminary dives.
Some of the best swimmers to come out of the Madison area also were All-City divers at some point during their competitive careers — including Beata Nelson and Justin Temprano, former high school state swimming champions who now both swim for the University of Wisconsin.
Henry Carman, the 2017 Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 2 state diving champion from Monona Grove High School, will make his All-City swansong at this year’s meet before heading off to Georgia Tech; Carman has won All-City age-group titles five of the past six years.
“Diving has generated a fair degree of interest in the league,” McDade says. “And the outdoor pools have much better diving facilities than the indoor pools.”
Monona’s pool first opened in 1963. A new pool, built on the same site in 1993, boasts two one-meter diving boards, will be closed for the dive meet but open to spectators for free. The Monona Swim & Dive Club will bring in additional bleachers from the city’s softball diamonds, as well as offer concessions.
The All-City Swim and Dive League is in its 56th year, and has increased from five pools back in 1962 to 13 pools. Madison’s Goodman Pool, the most recent addition, joined in 2011. This year marks the first time Goodman is sending divers to the All-City Meet.
Communities outside Madison also offer competitive swim teams, including the Sun Prairie Piranhas, which is part of the eight-team Tri-County Swim Conference that includes Baraboo, Cross Plains and Sauk Prairie.
