The Horizon League awarded “diver of the week” honors a combined 25 times to UWM athletes Rachel Margis and K.J. Heger this season.
The pair also dove to great finishes at the 2015 Horizon League Swimming and Diving Championships, where Heger was named diver of the meet.
Heger came to UWM from Rockford, Illinois, with minimal diving experience and ended up becoming one of the most accomplished divers to ever come through program, says UWM Diving Coach Todd Hill.
Heger, who was involved in competitive trampolining as a younger athlete, said his ability to recognize visual cues that alert him to his position during flips and general body awareness helped him successfully adapt his trampolining skills for diving competition.
Like Heger, Margis began her diving career in high school. Both divers noted that qualifying for the state tournament as high schoolers – Guilford High School for Heger and Racine’s Washington Park High School for Margis – was a catalytic moment that launched their collegiate careers.
This season, Margis set the school record for the one-meter dive, and was also named the women’s swimming and diving team’s diver of the year.
Margis was previously a gymnast, but says that diving has been a much more rewarding sport for her.
“I definitely enjoy diving more,” says Margis. “Diving is like half my life.”
Though he will graduate from UWM on May 17 and his time as a Milwaukee Panthers athlete is behind him, Heger says diving will remain a part of his life.
“I feel like it will just keep drawing me back in, whether it’s coaching or something else.”
Both Margis and Heger credited coach Todd Hill as a key factor behind their success.
“He’s part of the reason I came here,” says Heger.
“We understood what each of us was doing before we did it,” adds Hill
The strong bond shared by swimmers and divers on both the men’s and women’s teams also helped.
“Everyone gets along really well,” says Margis.
The current team of divers is a very close-knit group, pushing each other in practice to do better, Hill adds.
Every inch of encouragement helps, says Margis, who says that the sport is easily misunderstood.
“It’s really more than just jumping off the diving board,” Hargis says. “It’s mentally and physically challenging. It’s very detail oriented.”
The sport’s challenges spill outside of the pool. Heger says it was tough to balance the sport and schoolwork. The team’s commute to practice at the Walter Schroeder Aquatic Center in Brown Deer is over an hour round trip, and the time spent traveling to meets is demanding.
Not that either champion diver says “no” to a good challenge – in the pool or the classroom. Heger is days away from earning a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and plans to attend gradate school for physical therapy. Margis, a junior, will receive a chemistry degree next year and plans to attend dental school.
