Diving captain Kevin Bossou capped off his senior season with a strong showing at the NCAA Division III Region 1 Regional Championship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Feb. 27 – 28. Bossou achieved a 20th place finish for the 3-meter dive and a 17th place finish on the 1-meter. In a different world, those finishes may have never happened, as the Zones regionals weren’t always the planned final performance for Bossou.
“Full honesty, halfway through the season, Kevin and I had the conversation of what we wanted his senior season to look like, and Zones wasn’t included,” Assistant Swim and Dive Coach Casey Jones said.
With much of the long season still ahead, the postseason wasn’t even a factor yet.
“There’s a lot of pressure that comes with trying to hit a certain score or a certain dive, and by focusing on his flying list and his performance at MIAC [Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic] Conference Championships, we struck gold twice.” Jones said.
The unexpected surprise came as a shock to Bossou and shifted his mindset.
“To be honest, all four years, I’ve never really wanted to go to regionals. The season is pretty long, from September to mid-February, which is hard on the body, so I was ready to be done, but after I got that first qualification score, I was…I never actually realized how much I actually wanted it…I’m glad that I wasn’t thinking about regionals since the beginning of the season because I feel like it would’ve clouded my mind and made me more anxious with the rest of my season,” said Bossou.
This veteran, one step at a time approach to the season culminated at the aforementioned MIAC Championships, where Bossou hit his second and final Zones cut (a certain points threshold) and punched his ticket to regionals.
“Usually, what I do to prepare for my dives, I’ll sit under the water so I don’t hear my scores because in past years I would hear my score and then calculate in my brain ‘Oh, I need this many points to beat this person,’ and it’d just cloud my judgement and make my diving poor. So when I was sitting underwater, and I started hearing everyone screaming, I popped up, and I looked up at the scoreboard and I saw my score, and it was just an amazing experience and I honestly couldn’t ask for anything better,” Bossou said.
After reaching regionals, the hard part was already out of the way for the senior.
“I think I was more stressed at the MIAC conference than the regionals conference because at the regionals conference I was just diving to dive, have fun, and watch good dives…there were nine women and three men from the MIAC in general [at regionals], which was a really good experience, just having people that I’m comfortable with and I know them, they’re my friends and it made the whole experience a lot less stressful,” Bossou said.
Not only was his journey to regionals unique, but so were the dives he used.
“He’s truly a showman! And he competes dives I’ve never seen another diver attempt in the 20 years I’ve been involved in the sport. Hearing the other athletes and coaches ooh and aah over his skill and control is an incredible feeling. He’s worked so hard to get to this point, to get his ‘people pleaser’ dives, and I’m truly so proud of him. Plus, this is something Kevin and I have talked about and worked towards since his freshman year, so to have it all come together his senior year made it all the more special,” Jones said.
Even when zooming out to include his entire repertoire, no one really did it like Bossou.
“He learned that he can be competitive without the ‘typical’ list you see men compete, which gave him a level of confidence I hadn’t seen in him before,” Jones said.
It’s always hard to move on from an athletic career, regardless of how long, but coaches know their players better than most.
“I can’t wait to see what his future holds. All I know is that it will truly be Kevin,” Jones said.
