Senior AJ Ulwelling is a star diver on Lawrence’s men’s swimming and diving team. It may surprise many to know that he didn’t start diving until halfway through his first year of college. He ran cross country and track all throughout high school and originally committed to Lawrence as a distance runner. However, he had “always been interested in diving,” and recounted how fascinated he was when watching divers in the Olympics as a child. He had expressed his interest in the sport to the diving coach at his high school but was turned away due to his lack of prior experience.
“The coach said she didn’t have enough time to train someone from the beginning,” Ulwelling recalled.
After running his first season of cross country as a first-year, he reached out to the dive coach, and started diving during Winter Term. Over the past four years, he’s been honored with several titles and awards, including 2022 Midwest Conference Diver of the Year and 2022 Midwest Conference champion on both the one-meter and three-meter boards. Despite these titles, Ulwelling says his proudest achievement was his 2023 season where he placed third in both events. “I had the two best PRs that I’ve ever had,” he said, and he felt he was at a “higher competitive level” than last year.
Looking back on his time in Lawrence athletics, he said that the biggest challenge was balancing his time.
“You have all your classes and practice and homework and then meets on the weekend, it does take a lot of time,” said Ulwelling.
However, there are plenty of positives to the time crunch of being a student athlete.
“You’ll learn to deal with time management,” he said, also mentioning how he enjoyed that it “gave [him] a lot of structure” in his everyday routine.
As a graduating senior, he has already finished his last season of diving at Lawrence. He acknowledged that it can be strange to move on from college athletics but would like to tell other senior student athletes that “there’s always a lot of cool ways to stay involved with your sport.” Ulwelling plans to stay involved in diving by taking on a part-time coaching job in the future.
“Just because you’re finishing your sport at Lawrence doesn’t mean you necessarily have to let that love for your sport die,” Ulwelling said.