Page 29 - Demo

and continue their training at Moss Farms under the direction of Chris Heaton, head coach and program director, and John Fox, assistant coach. In December, Holloway and Merriam traveled to Kazan, Russia to compete in the FINA World Junior Championship.
Heaton attributes the facilities, programming, and mission as key reasons for the center’s success.
“We can get the training we need every single day regardless of the weather conditions,” said Heaton, who arrived at Moss Farms Diving Center in 2015. “The dry-land practice area
is key. University programs might have a dry-land practice area or some just have trampolines and maybe a dry board setup, but here we have the equipment where children can practice everything even on cold days, and this makes the training process more of a uid routine.”
Getting them at a young age and moving them through the programs is the best way to develop a diver that is ready to compete at the collegiate level and beyond.
“It’s really about developing them from when they are 5, 6, and 7 years old until they are 18,” said Heaton. “It takes 10 years and 10,000 hours of training to really develop an athlete. Our high- performance group (11 to 16 years old) trains four hours every day.”
Under the coaching of Heaton and Fox, there are approximately 70 Diving Tigers ranging from 5 to 18 years of age.
The Junior Olympic team has 18 members, seven of which are part of the High Performance team.
“Members of the High Performance team are our top athletes,” Heaton said. “They are the team members
that qualify for nationals and place regularly in the top 10.”
Heaton is excited to start the Tiny Tiger program, ages 6-10 years old, for the young diving standouts.
“I love this group,” Heaton said. “We have selected this group based on identi ed talent. We are investing a lot of time with this group. They will be the ones moving through the program to possibly become part of the High Performance team in a few years.”
Heaton said the goal is to win a team championship at the junior national level. He would also like to have members of the Diving Tigers return to Moss Farms Diving after their post- collegiate competition to train for the Olympic Games.
“When John (Fox) and I rst got here we painted a vision of what we knew could be accomplished,” Heaton said, “and what had to be done to get to that point.”
With excellent facilities and robust training programs, Heaton and Fox began working on what they consider the most important element of training—building character.
“We have adopted a culture that includes faith, character, and sport,” Heaton explained. “We are investing in the culture ideology that rst comes faith, then we work on building the person’s character, then the sport comes last.”
Heaton rmly believes that with this vision they are developing the complete person and athlete.
“We want people to see the success,” Heaton said. “But it has to be in this order. This has been a shift in our culture, and I think it is contributing to our success as a team and individually.”
BUSINESS + CULTURE 29 PHOTO BY GALE S. COUCH