The girls interested in diving lined up so Coach Todd Dulaney could talk with them. “Who can do a front flip?” Coach Dulaney asked. “I can,” a seventh-grader looking to try diving for the first time responded. That is when Ali Lange’s diving career started.
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Everyone wants to do diving because they think its ‘easy’, until they whack the water the first time.”
Advertisement - Story continues below...– Todd Dulaney, Rock Springs Diving Coach
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Ali Lange has participated in gymnastics most of her life. Around seventh grade, she decided to try something new. She liked the flipping in gymnastics and was looking for something similar. Diving had what she was looking for.
In Ali’s sophomore year, she and her coach, Todd Dulaney, spent the year trying to out-dive the defending state champion. After a year of hard work, Ali was still second at the state competition. However, the defending state champion would graduate that year.
Ali’s junior year brought a new challenge. She was now the best diver in the state. She would have to transition from trying to be the best to maintaining her spot at the top. Ali and her coach talked about how to take on the new season. Coach Dulaney hadn’t had a diver in the top spot for several years.
“As a coach I’d been in that position before but it was a long time ago. It was different to have everyone chasing us and was a big hurdle to get in the right mindset,” Dulaney said.
One thing you should know about Ali is that her athleticism extends to other sports. This has undoubtedly helped her know how to approach different obstacles in competition. In fact, A-L-I could be another way to spell athletic when you consider she competes in gymnastics, soccer and indoor track in addition to her diving during the year. One of Ali’s goals is to letter a collective 12 times in the sports she competes in.
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If you are familiar with diving, you will notice Ali’s unique approach to diving, which has been influenced by her time as a gymnast.
Ali and her coach practice for an hour and a half in the morning and for three hours after school. If she didn’t reach her goals, it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying on her part.
Despite potential difficulties as the new top diver in the state, Ali’s kept her entry splashes down and her performance scores up. In her first weekend of competition, she beat the 11-Dive junior record. The next weekend, she didn’t miss a beat when she bested the 6-Dive junior record. With those two milestones achieved, she continued to focus on becoming state champion and set her sights on a distant state record.
During this past season, Ali had a close meet in Laramie against Laramie’s Taryn White. Coach Dulaney said Taryn is an opponent who pushed Ali during this past season. At the Laramie meet, Ali was not having her best performance. But, when the diving board stopped bouncing and the judges finished scoring, she was still the top diver.
When it came time for state, Ali knew she needed to stay confident and perform to the level she was capable of. Ali finished off her undefeated season with a victory at state to become Rock Springs’ newest state champion diver since 1988. Coach Dulaney said it has been a while since he had a diver go undefeated in a season. Probably 28 years since that is when the last state champion diver competed, if not longer.
With a successful junior season behind her and another season of diving ahead of her, Ali will have another year to dive her way into the record books.
