Saline Diver Twists and Turns to the Top
By
Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
November 19, 2015
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
SALINE – Camryn McPherson is just a junior at Saline High School, and already her athletic life has been filled with twists and turns.
That suits her just fine.
McPherson, possibly the favorite to win the 1-meter diving portion of the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals this weekend at the Holland Community Aquatic Center, got her start in athletics spinning, jumping and balancing her way in gymnastics. However, the sport eventually took a toll on McPherson’s back, and the injury forced her to make the tough decision to quit the sport she loved.
“I really didn’t want to quit gymnastics, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself,” McPherson said. “I had to find something else.”
McPherson was connected to gymnastics. She had been a typical young girl, dancing and spinning and jumping her way through the day. Her parents, Brad and Jen McPherson, were not sure what they had on their hands, but they saw something in her.
“We weren’t gymnastics coaches, but we could tell she was good,” Brad McPherson said. “She got involved in gymnastics at a young age, and it just went on from there.”
It was the sport of choice for young Camryn, but it wasn’t the sport of destiny. Apparently, that was diving, and soon after giving up gymnastics, McPherson spent a summer diving at a local country club. She not only found that she was pretty good at it, but she discovered that having a background in gymnastics was beneficial to her approach in diving.
“A lot of the spins and moves are the same, so that helped a lot,” she said.
Standing on the diving board might feel similar to standing on the balance beam to a certain extent, but the obvious difference of diving into the water made McPherson a little apprehensive at first.
“I was more uncomfortable on platform diving, and I still don’t do that,” she said. “But the diving doesn’t bother me now.”
That is obvious, judging by her scores. Last year as a sophomore, McPherson finished second in the MHSAA Division 1 meet at Eastern Michigan University. Her score of 478.10 was better than the previous division record. However, it wasn’t good enough to beat Saline teammate Amy Stevens, who won the event for the second consecutive year with 488.20.
Stevens is not diving for Saline this year, so McPherson enters Friday as the highest finisher from last year. Also, she beat Stevens in the Regional a year ago and repeated as regional champion this year, stamping her as a favorite and definitely someone to watch this weekend.
Winning the MHSAA championship is the only thing missing on McPherson’s resume from high school diving.
“I do feel a little pressure going into it,” McPherson said. “I did OK at the Regional, but I know I could have done better.”
Competing with Stevens the past few years was beneficial to both divers.
“Amy pushed me, and I always wanted to be as good as she is,” McPherson said. “I think we were able to push each other, and I learned a lot from her.”
The friendly rivalry with Stevens was not the only thing that has worked well for McPherson during her career on the Saline swimming and diving team. Last year, when the Hornets won the LP Division 1 championship in thrilling fashion, McPherson was able to share the joy with her older sister Alex, who now attends the University of Connecticut and is on the women’s swimming team.
Alex swam on the 400 freestyle relay, which won last year’s LPD1 Finals championship. The victory came in the final event of the meet, and that race clinched the team championship for Saline.
“Being able to be on the same team as her was one of the big reasons why I wanted to join the swimming team,” McPherson said. “And then being able to win the state championship with her was really exciting.”
McPherson also is a part of the Legacy Diving team under coach Buck Smith, who also coaches men’s and women’s diving at Eastern Michigan University. This spring, McPherson, competing with Legacy, finished in the top two in both the 1-meter and 3-meter events in the 16-18 girls USA Diving Junior Region 5 championships in Columbus, Ohio.
McPherson won the 1-meter with 406.50 points and was runner-up in the 3-meter with 452 points. Her top scores in the 1-meter came on an inward 1½ somersault in the pike position and a forward 2½ somersault in the tuck position. She received more than 50 points for each dive.
McPherson moved on to the USA Diving National Preliminary Zone C championships at the University of Indiana and finished fourth in the 1-meter and fifth in the 3-meter.
While it is still a way off, McPherson dreams of joining her sister at Connecticut, but the college process is still working its way out.
“We are hearing from colleges, and we went through it with her sister,” Brad McPherson said. “We’ll see how it works out.”
One would guess there could be a few more twists and turns along the way.
Chip Mundy served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86, and then as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen-Patriot from 1986-2011. He also co-authored Michigan Sports Trivia. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Camryn McPherson dives during last season’s Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals. (Middle) McPherson was an aspiring gymnast before taking up diving. (Middle photo and head shot courtesy of the McPherson family.)
Standish-Sterling Builds on Early Investment
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
November 19, 2019
Shawn Maison said he started to see things turn around for Standish-Sterling’s girls swimming & diving team when athletes who had come up through the youth program began to populate his team.
Now he’s doing what he can to make sure that keeps happening.
“Whenever we get these successes, I have all these posters on the wall with the conference championships. And the little kids see that, and maybe then they aspire to want to swim at that level and enjoy that success,” said Maison, who is in his seventh year leading the Panthers varsity.
“We gave the kids a picture and had all the girls sign it. We have a swim buddies thing, where they all write to each other back and forth, so all the different levels encourage each other. That’s just kind of the connection we want the youth to have with us, so they don’t forget about us.”
The Panthers recently wrapped up a second-straight perfect dual-meet season in the Independent Swim Conference and won their second straight conference meet. On Friday, they will send a school record five swimmers to the Lower Peninsula Division 3 Finals at Oakland University, where they’ll look to put an exclamation point on an already historic season.
“It’s been so much fun to be a part of all these girls coming up, and each year we’ve been getting better,” said sophomore Sierra Maison, Shawn’s daughter. “We’ve shot through so many barriers that haven’t ever been broken before by our swim team. Like winning our ISC conference two times in a row – before, the girls team was just struggling to even win a dual meet.”
Maison will be joined at the MHSAA Finals by Mady Ahleman, Savanna Kurchak, Sareena Kurchak and Emily Ratajczak. Maison, Ahleman and Ratajczak will swim with Savanna Kurchak in the 200-yard medley relay, and Sareena Kurchak in the 400 freestyle relay. Ratajczak also qualified for the 100 breaststroke, while Ahleman qualified for the 100 backstroke.
Sierra Maison – who has now been named ISC Swimmer of the Year in each of her first two seasons – qualified in the 200 freestyle, 200 individual medley, 100 butterfly, 100 freestyle, 500 freestyle, 100 breaststroke and 100 backstroke. She will swim the IM and breaststroke at the Finals.
A year ago, Maison advanced to the consolation “B” final in the 200 IM, finishing 13th after placing 11th in the preliminary round. That was the highest ever finish for a Standish-Sterling swimmer, but she plans to break that record this year.
“Nobody has ever made it to the finals at the state meet,” she said. “Last year was a rough meet for me. This year, I’m hoping to redeem myself a little bit and get into that A final. It would be awesome. I’m really going for top three here. Training has been amazing so far.”
Maison is one of those swimmers who came up through the youth program. But while her arrival has helped take the Panthers to new heights, the rise didn’t start there.
“When some of the girls that had been with the youth program started to come up to the varsity level and had that structure at practice at all different levels,” Shawn Maison said of when he began to see the program turning a corner. “The first one was Emily Ratajczak (now a senior), then Mady Ahleman (now a junior), then Sierra. Really in the last three to four years we started to see long-term swimmers who had taken swimming seriously starting to show up on varsity. Now, 70 to 80 percent of the team is like that.”
Shawn Maison makes it abundantly clear that while those swimmers may have changed the direction of the program, all his athletes are playing a major part in the team’s success.
That goes beyond coach speak, as the ISC meet sees all swimmers score, making each race for each swimmer vital. This year’s meet came down to the final event (400 freestyle relay), and while the Standish-Sterling A team came out on top, it was the B team finishing among the top eight that clinched the meet.
“We cut the conference pretty close this year,” Shawn Maison said. “It’s come down to the last relay both years. I always say we would have lost if we wouldn’t have had any one of our team members. The beauty about a school our size is that kids know they’re valued by the team, and they can see that in the score at the end of the year.”
The future looks bright, said Maison, who mentioned there are several strong swimmers coming up through the youth ranks. Thanks to seven years of hard work put in by those before them, they’ll be strengthening an already solid core, and not having to pave their own way.
“I’ve gotten to be with him through the whole journey,” Sierra Maison said. “It’s been super cool to see how much the numbers have grown. It went from maybe five people when he first started to now a 20-member team.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Standish-Sterling girls swimming & diving team huddles up during a meet this fall. (Middle) Sierra Maison launches at the start of the 200 IM consolation final during last season’s Lower Peninsula Division 3 Finals at Holland Aquatic Center. (Top photo courtesy of the Standish-Sterling girls swimming & diving program; middle by HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)