When current head coach Jamie Sweeney took over the Mizzou diving program midway through the 2004 season, no Tiger diver had ever received NCAA All-American honors. Now on the brink of launching his 11th season at the helm, Sweeney has helped nine different Tigers earn that distinction, including the most decorated Mizzou diver in school history, 10-time first team All-American David Bonuchi.
Sweeney's passion for the sport of diving was not born the conventional way. The back-to-back SEC Men's Diving Coach of the Year did not even begin diving until sophomore year of high school. Sweeney preferred snowboarding, an activity that required twisting, flipping and contorting your body. He spent his free time growing up with friends at the Hidden Valley Ski Area in St. Louis practicing jumps.
Then one day, in P.E. class, the Eureka High School swim coach discovered Sweeney and his buddies showing off their snowboarding tricks using the diving board.
"The swim coach came right over to us and made us try a couple things off the board for her," Sweeney said. "By the end of class, I was doing a front two and a half tuck just messing around. She said I needed to come out for the diving team."
After a little prodding, Sweeney obliged and it paid off. The diving scores he earned at his first official high school meet qualified him for the Missouri state meet. Sweeney says that woke him up.
"I knew diving was my sport after that and I knew I had to do it full-fledged so I started driving an hour to and from the St. Peters Rec Plex to train there until college," Sweeney said.
Three years later, the snowboarder-turned-diver was recruited to come to Mizzou on a diving scholarship. He excelled as a student athlete from 1999-2003, culminating his career with a second-place finish at the Big 12 Championships. Upon graduation, he owned Mizzou records in both the 1-meter and 3-meter events.
Sweeney felt like Columbia, Mo., was home, opting to stay in the area after college to guide young divers on the club circuit and assist the Mizzou squad on a volunteer basis. Then in 2004, the coaching vacancy opened up and Sweeney pounced on the opportunity of a lifetime to become the interim coach at his alma mater at age 24.
By the end of his initial campaign overseeing the program, two Tiger divers clinched NCAA-Championship qualifying scores for the first time in more than two decades. Sweeney was subsequently handed the coaching gig on a full time basis. Quickly, Sweeney's passion for diving rocketed to an entirely different level. He says he was a sponge, traveling all over the country and all over the world to soak up everything he could about the sport, from coaching techniques to training strategies.
"I wanted to know how every country built Olympians so I sat down with Olympic coaches and asked for all their information," Sweeney said. "I didn't want my athletes to fail because I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted to get 10 years worth of coaching in a short amount of time because I had to gain experience."
The countless hours dedicated to improving himself were all for the purpose of making Mizzou proud of its diving program and proud of him.
"My passion is not just for diving, it's for Mizzou diving," Sweeney said. "This is my home. I just don't think success would mean as much if it came somewhere else than the University of Missouri."
Sweeney has built a program that has become a national force on an annual basis. He says it has been possible through the positive atmosphere that surrounds Mizzou swimming and diving and the incredible support of the athletic department.
"To train divers at the most elite level of the sport, it takes a village of people supplying the student athletes with what they need to maximize their absolute potential and Mizzou has provided that," Sweeney said.
The entire Mizzou swimming and diving program takes pride in using positive sports psychology. Sweeney does not spend his time on the pool deck yelling and screaming, but rather instilling in his athletes the right mindset about growing as individuals. Entering his second decade as a Tiger coach, Sweeney says the key to continued improvement and unparalleled success in the future is less about winning and more about positive thinking.
"Our 100 percent focus is getting everything we can out of an athlete in a positive way," Sweeney said. "We focus on the process as opposed to getting distracted by the outcome."