Mizzou diver to pursue 2028 Olympics after collegiate career

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Many people train their whole lives to be an Olympian. For Mizzou's Collier Dyer, it may only take him six short years.

As a high school freshman, Dyer played football in the fall, and wrestled in the winter, and was searching for a third sport for the final season.

"I was deciding between doing track and diving," said Dyer. "It was like, "okay, I think I'll try diving," and then I just really liked the first few weeks in the sport. And then I went back that next fall and played the next season of football and decided to switch to diving full time, and stopped playing all other sports."

He went on to join Mile High Diving Club in January of 2020, but his inaugural season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that did not stop him from pursuing the sport at the next level.

"I made recruiting videos, I was filming things all the time, I reached out to coaches, and then I got lucky when Kyle came back and he said, "hey, I'm going to be at a practice today. I'll check it out."

Mizzou diving coach Kyle Bogner has also gone through the Mile High Dive Club system, and had a connection to the program.

"It's great coming up through that system, because knowing the coaches there, you always look for talented people in these giant creative pipelines," said Bogner.

Despite only having started months prior, Dyer left an immediate impact as a raw prospect with the potential to be great.

"One of the things that I look for is, is potential and my ability to develop that," said Bogner. "Some people have really great entries. Some people spin really fast. Jump really high, he ended up having kind of a combination of all of that."

Dyer was recruited by several other high-profile college programs, but felt at home in Mizzou, and in 2022, he began his first season of NCAA competition.

"My first taste of college diving was kind of a double edged sword because, I didn't have all the time in the world as a younger diver and a junior diver to kind of learn everything that they generally do. So a lot of my learning processes have been consolidated. It was definitely a big learning year for me," said Dyer.

"There's a long way to go when you've only been diving for two or two and a half years," said Bogner. "So, it was just really trying to to pull everything that we could out of him and teach him everything that we could in the short amount of time that you have between August and March."

His freshman season concluded with him placing sixth at the Zone D championships, and qualified for the NCAA championships in two different diving events.

"Since the end of my freshman year, I really just got even more passionate about the sport and just wanting to be better at it and wanting to be great at it."

In the years following his rookie season, Dyer qualified for the national meet two more times, earning all American status as a sophomore, and became a two time medalist at the SEC meet.

After his junior year, Dyer qualified for the U.S. championships, where he placed second on the three-meter dive, and third in the one-meter dive. Those results were good enough to give him a spot on the American diving team for the 2025 World Championships.

"I definitely was kind of on the fence about it going into spring nationals in May, and then when I made the World Championship team and I got to experience that meet in Singapore, I was like, man, this is this is pretty great," said Dyer.

At worlds, he finished 13th overall in the three-meter competition after only training for five years.

Now, with just two meets remaining in his college career, he already has his eyes set on the next step of his journey. After graduation, he's set to move to Mission Viejo, Cali. to continue his diving career full time. There, he will join a professional training group with some of the best divers in the world with the hopes of making the U.S. team for the 2027 World Championships, and the 2028 Olympic team.

"It's definitely really cool to think about what am I going to do now that I don't have school or anything. I'm just excited to kind of switch over to a path of like, I'm going to figure out everything that's best for my diving," said Dyer.

"He's done so great about just continuing to press in and figure stuff out and so I think that if he continues to do that, he's going to be just fine," said Bogner on Dyer taking his next steps. "I think there's no question that he was going to be able to compete with the best because he has a lot of the skills and traits that the best at diving have."

Dyer will compete at the Zone D championships on Monday, March 9, and Tuesday, March 10 to try to punch a ticket to the NCAA championships, and earn one final all-american honor before taking his first steps as a professional.