Diving
Stuyvesant ‘06
Villanova ‘10
When James Styles (‘06) left Stuyvesant High School for Villanova University, he had a decision to make. He had been a Pirate, a member of the boys’ varsity swimming and diving team, for four years at Stuyvesant. He had placed first in all but three of 17 diving events: the 500-yard freestyle, 100-yard backstroke and 200-yard freestyle. Despite his success in both swimming and diving, he had to choose between the two at Villanova.
“When I came [to Villanova], I didn’t really know what to expect from the swimming or diving team,” Styles said. “I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to swim or dive.” He was leaning toward diving, so he e-mailed Villanova’s diving coach, who invited him to a practice. Styles went, found that he liked the other members on the team and decided to make the commitment.
Pirates’ coach, Peter Bologna, who coached Styles since his sophomore year, was glad Styles stuck with diving. “It’s very tough to do both,” Bologna said. “At some point in your career you have to decide: am I going to be a diver, or am I going to be a swimmer? I’m very happy he chose diving and [is] concentrating on doing one because he’s really talented.”
Styles chose diving over swimming partially because it involved less practice time. “It’s a big difference from swimming. It’s much less of a time commitment,” he said. The diving team practices for two-and-a-half hours a day, Monday through Friday, in addition to individual gym workouts. The swim team, on the other hand, practices from Monday through Saturday and practices longer each day. “I really didn’t think I’d be able to handle that, with school,” he said. “I thought it was time for a little bit of a change—to gain focus in a different area.”
Styles was also enticed by the trips the diving team takes. They go to Florida and Puerto Rico every year for training trips and are planning to go to Spain in 2008.
In addition, he finds he thrives under the pressure that individual diving involves. “You’re out there all on your own, and if you screw up everyone sees it, and the only one to blame is yourself. It’s kind of cool,” Styles said.
In competitions, there are five groups of dives in which divers have to compete: forward, back, inward, reverse, and twists. Divers have to perform six dives per competition—one of each while doubling up in one. Styles considers inwards, where the diver takes off with their back to the water and rotates forwards, to be his hardest dive, while his favorite and best is the twists, which involves an axial twisting movement.
Villanova is a Division I NCAA school in the Big East and is known for its sports. Its men’s basketball team is currently ranked 17th in the nation, and has graduated alumni such as Tim Thomas, who starred in the National Basketball Association. To Styles, this is an added bonus, but not a primary concern.
“My decision to go to Villanova was completely aside from athletics, that was a secondary thing,” he said. “I really wanted to get the best education at the best place for me. When I came here with the Stuy college tour my junior year, it felt like where I wanted to be. It was a bonus to be able to compete in diving.”
He has indeed made the most of his college experience in and out of the pool. Last year, Styles was named to the Big East Academic All-Star Team, which commemorates Big East athletes who have achieved an overall Grade Point Average of 3.0 or higher. He is currently studying Villanova’s core liberal arts curriculum of philosophy, sociology, religion and literature. He is also taking chemistry, biology and majoring in physics, a subject that piqued his interest during his junior year, when he took Regents Physics with physics teachers John Avallone and Benjamin Dreyfus.
“They just made it so much fun,” Styles said of his former teachers. “That’s something that I thought I would be interested in, in college.” While he wants to pursue a career in science, he has not yet decided what that career will be. “One thing that Stuy did give me was that love of math and science,” he said.
Although he believes he is learning a lot and being challenged, he describes the academic environment at Villanova as much less intense.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the world that compares to the academic experience at Stuy,” Styles said. “It was cut-throat. The level of work that I had to do definitely left me better prepared than anyone else I know coming into college. The work that I’m doing now and the stuff that I’m learning is a higher level, but the basic things I learned at Stuy are helping me achieve [at] that level.”
Due to Stuyvesant’s competitive environment, Styles said he “wasn’t the happiest person in the school.” He does not consider himself a “grade-oriented person,” and was not interested in comparing grades.
Yet, he still misses the swim team and the school. He gets together with other Pirates alumni when they return home for summer, winter and spring breaks.
During these times he reminisces about his career at Stuyvesant. He particularly remembers feeling nervous at the swim tryouts his freshman year, at which 80 people competed for seven slots. He believes he has greatly improved since then.
“I see where I am sometimes at some of the meets we go to, and I’m like, man, how did I get here from where I first started?” he said. “It takes a lot of work, and a lot of dedication, but in the end it all goes well.”
The Pirates have not forgotten him either.
“He was pretty cool,” senior and captain Christopher Han said. “What we have on the back of our t-shirts, ‘Immortality,’ was kind of brought on by him.”
“He was the best diver I ever coached,” Bologna said. “He’s a fun guy to talk to, fun guy to coach and fun guy to be around.”
