Close Up
Helder shines in diving competitions
The roles have been reversed for UB diving coach Karla Helder and Michael McDowell, one of her top divers. McDowell is training Helder for her competitions. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“I’ve lost 35 pounds and I gave up all the things you are supposed to give up and started training harder.”
“You’re still just a fraction bit early and a hair soft when you kick on that,” shouts UB diving coach Karla Helder to one of her top divers as he exits the water. The diver, Michael McDowell, listens to her critique, climbs up the ladder to the three-meter springboard and executes a nearly flawless dive.
Last year, under Helder’s coaching, McDowell was the second man in UB’s 12-year history of Division I swimming and diving to attend the NCAA championship.
But this past May and August, it was Helder’s turn to shine on the springboard. At the 2008 FINA World Masters Diving Championships, she won two gold medals and set world records in the one-meter and three-meter competition in the 50-to-54-year-old age group. And at the U.S. Diving Masters Nationals, Helder won her age group events and set two new American records. She also swept gold at the Grand Masters, a unique event with strict qualifying standards and a 15-year age range.
Coaching her to these impressive wins? None other than her top diver, McDowell.
Last September, when Helder told McDowell that she wanted to compete in the World Masters in Australia, McDowell volunteered to coach her. They both agree that her training got off to an awkward start.
“She expected to dive and do whatever she wanted and I told her ‘go to the end of the board and jump’ like she did to us at our practices,” explains McDowell. Although shocked at first, “she ended up appreciating it because I was able to break down her mechanics,” he says. “She’s doing things she hasn’t done in 10 or 15 years.”
Helder admits that she’s a different person due to her new coach. “I’ve lost 35 pounds and I gave up all the things you are supposed to give up and started training harder.”
Even as she benefits from this coaching arrangement, Helder still has a role in teaching McDowell, who would like to eventually become a professional diving coach. “He’s so precise and eloquent in his teaching style—he follows the same patterns I use, so it was a natural flow and it works out very well,” says Helder.
Adds McDowell: “Through me coaching her and her coaching me, we are able to bounce ideas off each other. Last year, we picked up two huge ideas that helped both of us improve our diving.”
A relative late bloomer, Helder didn’t start diving until she was 20 years old. She began as a student at California State University-Chico and continued diving as a transfer student at Cal State-Northridge. At Northridge, her team won the national championship, and by the time she graduated from college, she was a two-time All-American national champion on the three meter springboard.
A teacher and coach since 1980, Helder is in her fifth season as a UB diving coach and currently has five men and three women divers. “This facility and the people that I work with have given me the opportunity to not only help my athletes excel, but for me to excel with them,” she says.
She also runs Wings diving, a private diving club, where she makes sure diving students learn safe and comprehensive techniques for the sport.
Before coming to UB, she held coaching positions at a number of California universities, Clemson University in South Carolina, and even spent a year setting up a diving club in Venezuela.
And while Helder may have gotten a late start, she has no plans to stop diving. She cites the story of a 101-year-old diver named Viola Kran as her inspiration. Kran only did one dive in competitions, although she was supposed to do two dives.
“When I asked her why she only ever did one dive, she said, ‘When there’s somebody to dive against, I’ll do two dives,’” Helder says.
“We have a group of ladies that are trying to get to be that age so we can compete against each other to do two dives at the age of 101.”
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