CURTIS HENRY
Special to The Leader
While the 2014-2015 school year has been a down year for most of Fredonia’s athletic teams, the Men’s and Women’s swimming and diving teams have proven to be exceptions. At the head of the charge for Men’s diving is sophomore Arron Carlson.
Carlson, who attended Notre Dame High School in Batavia, is headed to the NCAA Championships for diving for the second consecutive season. He’ll be joined there by three other Fredonia divers: sophomore Jeff Matter, sophomore Meghan Bartlett and senior Heather Colby.
What makes Carlson’s journey back to the championships intriguing is that it almost didn’t happen.
At this point four years ago, Carlson had no intentions of going to college for diving. In fact, he always wanted to pursue a college athletic career in track.
“I was born and bred on the track,” Carlson said. “But my sophomore year, after I’d transferred [to Notre Dame], I was messing around on the diving board one day, and my coach saw me and told me I could compete.”
And boy, did he compete.
Only a year after his beginnings in the sport of diving, Carlson had already beaten down high school records in both the six-dive and 11-dive competitions. In addition, he had qualified for the NYS state competition. It was then that he realized he could carry on to the next level.
“I had spent so much time involved in diving that I had fallen in love with the sport, more than I did with track,” said Carlson. “That’s when I knew I wanted to keep diving.”
Fast forward to the spring semester of his senior year of high school. Carlson knew he wanted to keep diving and he knew where he wanted to go. But, surprisingly, that destination was not Fredonia. In fact, a mere 24 hours was the difference in Carlson’s decision.
“Originally I had planned on going to Oswego,” he said. “I had my papers filled out and signed, and I was committed. But the night I went to officially submit everything, I got a call from Coach Crawford at Fredonia.”
That one call may have made all the difference.
A couple weeks after that call, Carlson visited Fredonia for the first time. He admits it wasn’t exactly by choice.
“My mom made me do it,” he said with a laugh.
It turns out his mother had the right idea.
“After 24 hours on campus, my whole situation was different. Oswego was really no longer an option. I knew I was going to Fredonia.”
That one night has led Carlson to where he is now as he prepares to head to his second National Championship appearance.
So what makes Carlson so good? He credits his success to great coaching and teammates over the past couple of seasons.
“Coach Crawford and coach Fuller are just great guys. They’re great coaches, great motivators,” said Carlson. “Having the teammates that I do helps a lot, too. We all want each other to be the best that we can.”
Teammate Jake Storms agrees with Carlson.
“It’s a great group of guys. We’re all good friends, but we are very competitive,” said Storms. “We all push each other hard, and we set the bar extremely high. We all want to do what Arron does, what Jeff does. We want to be at that level.
“Arron is just a great diver,” Storms concluded.
Coach Ryan Fuller thinks that Carlson has potential to do damage in this year’s championships and moving forward.
“He’s got a great chance of placing in the top eight in both the one-meter and three-meter events,” said Fuller. “He just needs to perform like he has been of late and he has a good shot.
“He’s got a lot of potential moving forward,” he continued. “He’s a good diver and is strong. Really, he’s just a good athlete. He can do well.”
Carlson, Matter, Bartlett and Colby will all travel to Shenandoah, Texas, for the championships on the 18-21 of this month.