Swimming & Diving: Kollar wins regional diving title

Douglas junior Eddie Kollar spent the last two springs running track while perhaps his better talent sat waiting on the back burner.

After some convincing from his friends, Kollar agreed to come out for the diving team this year. Just three months later, he captured the school's first diving regional championship since 2003.

Kollar posted a 429.70 to top Reed's Kyle Swanson (405.55) to win the 1-meter diving competition at the Northern 4A Swimming & Diving Championships last week.

He'll now be leading a contingent of four athletes from Douglas, including three other divers, to Las Vegas for the state championships this weekend.

Douglas' Ryan Dykes and Aleassa Anzelone each took third place in the boys' and girls' diving competitions respectively.

Sophomore Haley VonSchottenstein qualified for state in the 50 freestyle, taking second with a time of 25.36 seconds.

Kollar, though, has been on a steep learning curve since the season began.

"I started coming to the pool almost every day to dive with my friends about two summers ago," Kollar said. "I started figuring out this might be something I could do."

Kollar had plenty of coaxing from his friends, including Ryan Fore, who was on the Douglas dive team at the time and qualified for state as a senior last year.

"I was doing track in the spring at the time," said Kollar, who also competes in cross country in the fall and wrestling in the winter. "I had friends out there, but Ryan kept asking me why I didn't come out and try diving. I decided to give it a try since it would be a new challenge for me."

It didn't take long for Kollar to break onto the scene as he was the region's top scorer from the beginning of the season.

"We work on whatever dives we're going to be attempting in that week's meet and the coaches watch us and tell us what we can be working on," Kollar said.

Having to go on verbal input alone can be challenging, Kollar said, but he's recently begun to make frequent trips up to the University of Nevada to work out with the diving team up there.

"They have a Tivo set up, and you can go back and watch what you're doing," Kollar said. "It helps a lot."

It's been such a natural fit for Kollar that he is now hoping to move on to compete in college after next season.

"I'm going to put the work in this summer and keep going up to UNR to try to get better," Kollar said.

At regionals, Kollar's dive with the highest degree of difficulty -- the 21/2 pike -- didn't go quite as well as he would have hoped. However, he was able to get himself back in the competition with his fundamental dives, including a straight reverse, a reverse half-twist and a back somersault with a 21/2 twist.

"They gave me all eights on the reverse straight," he said. "That ended up being my best dive."

He's been saving up a couple tricks for state, though.

"I'm going to throw a triple at state, I'm a little scared about that," he said. "I've tried it once before in a meet and it actually went pretty well. We'll see how it goes and then I'll stick with what I do best after that."

Douglas' Thomas Asher and Samantha Phillips each just missed the state cut, each taking fourth in their respective competitions.

Despite not sending any swimmers on to state, the Douglas boys' swim team took fifth as a team at regionals with a team score of 168.

The state championships begin Friday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.