South Georgia - In The Game High School Sports Magazine

Moultrie, tiny though it may be, is actually a well-known community throughout the Southeast. It is the home of U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss. Former Hoover, Alabama, football coach Rush Propst, who entered the national sports consciousness through the MTV series “Two-A-Days,” now coaches at Colquitt County High. And the late Ivy J. Bryant, known around the U.S. as the fastest guitar picker anywhere, was a Moultrie native. Moultrie is also recognized as a power in an obscure sport — obscure at least in South Georgia. That sport is competitive diving, and Moultrie’s Moss Farms Diving Tigers possesses two of the nation’s best high school divers.

Kelsey Goodman and Ann-Perry Blank are both seniors at Colquitt County High. Both have been diving almost all their lives, and they each have a bright future ahead of them, though their ultimate goals differ. Kelsey, the daughter of Moss Farms head coach Ed Goodman, has dreams of making the Olympics. Ann-Perry, on the other hand, would like to perform well at the major college meets but isn’t looking for a post-college diving career. Before you think we’re getting the cart ahead of the horse talking about a collegiate diving career, it is worth noting that both athletes have signed college scholarships — Kelsey at Florida State University and Ann-Perry at the University of Georgia.

The sport of diving has an interesting — and colorful — history in Moultrie. The late Moose Moss and his wife, Janie, built a diving school on their Colquitt County farm in the 1960s. Moose had never been a diver, but he loved the sport and taught himself how to become a diving coach. Not only did he turn himself into a diving coach, he became one of the best in the country. When he passed away in the early 1990s, he had seen his dream come true. Since his death, the Moss Farms Diving Tigers have prospered. The academy has hosted a number of major diving meets, and several of the country’s top junior divers have come from the Moose Farms team.

Kelsey Goodman came to Moultrie with her family when her father, Ed, took a job as an assistant coach at Moose Farms four years ago. Ed had been a world-class tumbler and was one of the nation’s best divers during his career at the University of Cincinnati. Kelsey was born in Toledo, Ohio, and it was in Toledo that her diving career began. “I was just playing around for a long time. One day, it just clicked. I didn’t plan on diving competitively,” she recalls. Ed says when she was younger, Kelsey had no idea she was even practicing. “She thought she was just playing on the boards. When she was seven, she started going to meets and beating people. Kelsey qualified for her first region meet when she was nine,” says Ed. It was around that time that Kelsey and her family moved to the Florida Keys, where Ed had accepted

a position as a diving coach. After five years in the Keys, Ed and his family moved again, this time to Moultrie and the Moss Farms program. “I had been getting serious about diving when we were in the Keys. My dad sat me down and asked me if diving was what I wanted to do. I said it was, and that’s when I started dedicating myself to the sport,” she says.

Diving is one of those sports that could be described as more performance than competition. But that description doesn’t do the sport justice. It’s a fiercely competitive event, punctuated by that most daunting athletic challenge — one competitor, all alone, trying to impress a panel of judges. The perfect dive is a model of synchronicity. Everything — the approach, the jump, the dive itself, and the entry into the pool — has to be one continuous movement. Once in the air, that’s when the traditional athletic gifts take over: speed, agility, quickness and balance. The end result should be a perpendicular, splashless entry into the water. It’s something that divers practice over and over and over. During the winter, the Diving Tigers practice five days per week, two hours per practice. In the summer, the team holds two practices a day — four hours per day at the pool. “It can get really intense,” says Kelsey. Moss Farms has heated pools; as long as the temperature is 55 degrees or higher, the team practices outside. If it gets colder than that, the Tigers practice indoors at the YMCA.

Kelsey’s specialty is the 1-meter and 3-meter springboard competitions. The 1-meter isn’t an Olympic event, but it is in the NCAA. She says she can compete in the tower events, but would rather go no higher than three meters. “She’s a bit more specialized, and is very good on the springboard,” says Ed.

Kelsey and her teammates’ year is divided into two periods which overlap during the winter. The Diving Tigers compete in high school events as the Packers but also participate in USA Diving meets throughout the year. During her freshman and sophomore years, Kelsey won the state championship and set the 5A pool record. She missed last season due to a perforated eardrum.

The high school season lasts a couple of months. By March, it’s time to concentrate on USA Diving meets. There, the competition is more intense and the stakes are higher. The best junior divers from all over the United States are part of the USA Diving program, and Kelsey (and Ann-Perry, for that matter) can test herself against the best in the country. Her goal for the summer is to do well throughout the season and place in the top two at Summer Nationals. “If you do that, you make the junior world team and go to the PanAm Games. I’ve never done that. I’ve done well in the preliminaries, but I haven’t done well in the finals,” she says.

Her springboard prowess attracted attention from collegiate diving programs all over the United States. In the end, she decided to stay close to home and signed with Florida State. The FSU diving coach, Patrick Jeffrey, is a former Olympian and has the FSU program in very good shape. Given that one of Kelsey’s ultimate goals is to at least make the Olympic Trials, studying under a former Olympian is right in line with what she would like to do in the future. “Making the Olympic team would be fantastic,” she states, giggling.

Kelsey is an A/B student who is in excellent shape academically. She manages her time well and knows how to prioritize her commitments. “It’s not hard for me to balance school and diving. I don’t let myself fail,” she says. She is considering majoring in exercise science and hopes to one day work with athletes in a university setting.

Like her teammate, Ann-Perry Blank has been diving nearly her whole life. Unlike her teammate, Ann-Perry has lived in Moultrie all of her 17 years. A neighbor encouraged Ann-Perry’s mother to enroll her and her brother, Owen, in the diving program in Moultrie. It’s worked out pretty well for everyone involved. Ann-Perry and her brother both excelled at diving; Owen signed with the University of Georgia and is currently a sophomore for the Bulldogs. Ann-Perry dedicated herself to the diving platform, and will join Owen in Athens on the UGA diving team next year.

She followed a similar path to the Division I ranks as did Kelsey. “When I started diving, it was just for fun. But I began taking it seriously. I had been diving for a few years and I was making improvements. I just stuck with it,” she says. Part of the reason she loves diving is the whole experience of the diving scene. “We travel a lot and we meet a lot of great people from all over the country. I love the people, the travel and the experiences.”

Ann-Perry had been diving for about six years when she realized she might have a future in the sport. “I felt like if I stuck it out, all my hard work would pay off and I might be able to go to school,” she says. She did stick it out, and all the hard work has paid off. Ann-Perry is a three-time All-American, and wants to earn a fourth All-American nod this year. As good as she is, she knows she has to improve before she enters college. “I’ve got to keep getting better. I want to do well at Georgia,” she says.

Ann-Perry prefers the tower to the relatively low altitude of the 1- and 3-meters. She excels in the 5-, 7- and 10-meter events. Her best dives are anything involving backs – the back flips, twists, pikes and dives. It’s a daunting task staring a 2 ½ in the face while looking down at a panel of judges from 30 feet in the air (this author has leapt from a 10-meter platform before; just running off the end of the platform was scary enough!). Ann-Perry, however, is also very competent on the springboard. “She’s multi-talented and has the natural diving ability to do well on the springboard. She’s a very pretty diver,” says Coach Goodman.

All the practice, all the dedication, and all the sacrifice have been well worth the effort. Ann-Perry admits that she may not have always wanted to go to practice, but she knew she had to make the sacrifice if she wanted to improve. She’s always put diving above anything else, and there are things she hasn’t been able to do because of her singular focus on her chosen sport. But it’s not something that Ann-Perry regrets. She loves diving, and she knew what it would take to be successful from a very early age. “ ‘No, I’m sorry, I have diving’ was something I learned to say at a very early age,” she states.

She has become a master at time management and thrives off the structure of her schedule. Her routine is very repetitive – school, diving, homework, repeat. “I enjoy the schedule. I’ve been used to it for a long time. I want to be prepared for what college will bring. Owen has been telling me what it’s like – weights three times per week, two-a-days, more intensity and better competition,” she says.

Ann-Perry is considering a degree in criminal justice and thinks a career in federal law enforcement would be interesting. She is a big fan of the police investigation dramas – “Law and Order,” “CSI,” and the like. She’s an excellent student who puts academics on the same level as diving. “They are both at the top of the priority list. I couldn’t have one without the other,” she says. •