Courtney Broyles is a hop skip and small splash away from making it to the NCAA Zone diving meet. The Hamline junior has had great success throughout this season with three-meter high hopes to end with a zone qualifying score. 

As of now, Broyles has scored one of the two scores to make her season prolonged after the MIAC conference meet. Her first zone qualifying score took place on January 15 at St. Olaf College. 

“There are 2 ways to qualify for zones, the first way is in the season when you reach the set score, depending on the board, twice. If you qualify at conference, you only need the score once” Broyles said.

Her first score earned a MIAC Women’s Swimming and Diving Athlete of the Week spot for Broyles. Each week across the whole conference, one athlete is crowned with that title for a seven day period. For Hamline Swim and Dive, this accolade was even bigger. There has not been a women’s swim or dive athlete from Hamline to receive this honor since 2007, Hamline alumni Renee Punyko. 

Hamline Coach Katy Vandam explains Broyles excellence this season as “her ability and grace off the board,” as “mesmerizing to watch”, whereas Broyles explains the phenomenon as “I just kind of hope it happens, half the time I come out of the water like ‘was that good?’”

The success of Broyles has been a long time coming. 

“My freshman year was a pretty good season for me overall, I learned a lot of new things. Sophomore year was all during COVID so that was kind of a rough spot. We didn’t really have a lot of competitions so we didn’t really have anything to motivate us, so I think coming off of that and wanting to make up for lost time this year,” Broyles said.

The season is winding down but the pressure for swimmers and divers is ramping up. There are two more competitions for Broyles to hit her second zone qualification so she can be one step closer to making it to Nationals. 

“For diving, it goes conference, zones, nationals. It’s different for divers than for swimmers,” Broyles said. 

Broyles is taking the end of season one dive at a time, her focus is on consistency not making it the next round. “Coming up on the end of this week and next week I have a couple more dives that I want to get and then really work on being consistent, so when I go to conference I don’t have to worry about making it,” Broyles said.

It’s an exciting time to be a Hamline Swim and Dive fan. 

“We are extremely proud and impressed by Courtney this season,” Vadman said. “We can’t wait to see how much further she can push herself!”