There’s a reason Maddie Schaefer smiles a little more these days. The Pittsford Mendon junior is in the midst of her first healthy sports season in a long time. How long? Well, since fifth grade.
“Between getting over injuries, I’m pretty much either healing or diving,” the 16-year-old says with a grin.
Schaefer was a high-level youth competitor with Rochester Gymnastics Academy from the time she was a toddler until a few years ago. A series of injuries prompted her switch to diving and the body awareness of twisting and turning through the air that she’d already mastered helped ease her transition.
For the past 2½ years, Schaefer has been hurtling herself off a spring-loaded board instead of a sturdy balance beam, and smacking the water is far less painful than crash-landing onto a mat.
“She’s doing so many things well right now that once we get her to wait off the board a little bit longer and move her degree of difficulty up a little bit,” says Pittsford diving coach Mark McMann, “I think she’ll be competitive at the state level.”
McMann, 54, a former Fairport and University of Michigan diver who has watched and worked with some of Section V’s best in recent years, thinks Schaefer’s potential is “through the roof.” She already has broken records, not bones, this fall. Her 307.35 points at the New Hartford Invitational on Sept. 20 was, at the time, the state’s top six-dive score (it’s fourth now). It also set a meet record and eclipsed the Pittsford school record of 259 set in 1999 by Tai McNeil.
Two weeks ago, Schaefer broke Webster’s pool record held by former Fairport and Notre Dame standout Jenny Chiang, a four-time Big East champion. Chiang still owns the Section V and state record of 560.60 points that she established in 2008.
“I trained really hard over the summer, so it feels pretty good to have my work pay off,” says Schaefer, whose family moved to Pittsford from Newton, Mass., when she was second grade.
In July, Schaefer spent two weeks at the elite JetStream Diving Camp in Florida. Victor sophomore Erin Norton, who beat out Schaefer for last season’s Section V Class A title, and some boys from Pittsford also attended. McMann’s contacts helped pave the way. The camp’s founder, Dick Kimball, was his coach at Michigan. Kimball coached Wolverine divers for 43 years and was an U.S. assistant in four Olympic Games. He’s coached nine divers who have earned Olympic medals.
The camp is now run by Joe Greenwell, a two-time All-American in the early 1980s at the University of Florida. He’s considered one of the top dry-land dive training experts in the country.
“I was a little nervous going down there because I knew what I was getting myself into,” says Schaefer, a 94-average student and Pittsford team captain. “(The coaches) had a lot to say, so it was good. There was some amazing coaches.”
Schaefer did a lot of trampoline work, something she hadn’t done for diving. She’d done plenty of tumbling as a gymnast, starting around age 2 in Massachusetts. But shortly after graduating from programs such as “tiny tumblers” and “mighty munchkins,” she started competing.
Then the injuries started. Fractured heel bone on the vault in fifth grade (she actually finished the meet). Torn meniscus knee cartilage in sixth grade. Two stress fractures in her back in seventh. Two more meniscus tears on both knees followed in eighth grade and as a freshman, respectively.
It was time to stop, she and her family decided.
Schaefer enjoyed swimming in the family pool and her friends were on the swim team, so she tried doing sprint events as a freshman. She didn’t like it. “Just wasn’t for me,” Schaefer says.
Last year, a wrist injury due to a growth plate issue bothered her during the season and required surgery after it, but she toughed her way through it. “She has the ability to train with pain, which is pretty difficult,” Pittsford head coach Duane Green says.
He’s not surprised by her success. “The work ethic is definitely there,” Green says. “Not matter what she has to do, she’ll do it.”
Transitioning to diving from gymnastics came naturally, but she had to flip how her brain worked. In gymnastics, you’re supposed to always land on your feet. Much of the time in diving, it’s the opposite with a head-first dive.
Twisting dives are Schaefer’s favorite. “She’s still doing and scoring points with dives when she lands on her feet, so it’ll be a transition for her,” says McMann, who owns Ballantyne RV and Marine in Victor.
Schaefer isn’t being recruited yet but McMann is confident she has what it takes to dive for a Division I college program. For now, Schaefer is enjoying her pain-free days on the board.
“This is the longest I’ve ever been practicing for diving (without injury),” she says.
JDIVERON@DemocratandChronicle.com
Maddie Schaefer
School: Pittsford Mendon.
Class/age: Junior/16.
Sport: Diving.
This season: The 5-foot-8 Schaefer Pittsford’s school record that stood for 15 years, a 28-year-old New Hartford Invitational record and a six-year-old Webster pool mark set by former Section V standout, Jenny Chiang of Fairport.
Last season: Placed second in Section V Class A championships to Victor’s Erin Norton.
Pittsford junior Maddie Schaefer dazzles the judges and the crowd during a meet against Webster earlier this month.
