Josh Barber

John Tellgren is a second year Advertising and Public Relations major, a star diver, a fraternity member and a dancer on the side. Tellgren has been diving for seven years, has gone to nationals and has broken one RIT diving record. While most students might feel juggling school and a sport is difficult, he feels diving is a natural part of his day.

Telligren says that the Men’s and Women’s Diving and Swimming teams are close-knit. His favorite thing about his team is representing the school at home and away meets. He has fun at every meet encouraging his team members, he states.

Tellgren is not solely a diver. He loves to stay active through playing volleyball and contemporary jazz dancing that he teaches himself. He is also active on campus through his involvement with the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

Telligren feels that the most difficult aspect of being a diver is focusing for each dive. He states that his coach, Cliff Devries, has taught the diving team to visualize going through each dive beforehand. Slowly watching themselves do the dive in their head allows them to prepare mentally.

“Diving is a very mental sport,” said Tellgren. “You dive for two seconds, it’s not continuous action, so when you’re preparing on the end of the board before you do your dive, you have to really pay attention to what you’re doing and what your body is doing.”

Tellgren broke the school’s one-meter record at the Dick Cozmano Memorial Invitational earlier this year. His record stands at 513.40 points, a 25-point difference from the last record held by alumnus Evan Wendt.

“I thought there was a chance that it might have been one of my best scores but I had no idea that it was going to be that high to break the record,” Tellgren reminisces. “My focus wasn’t to go after the record. That’s not my mentality.”

Tellgren is happy with his performance and feels he has improved this year.

He is working toward going to nationals at the end of this diving season and says that much of his success in diving is due to Devries.