Mizzou diving earns first national title in program history
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Tiger senior Collier Dyer brought home the school's sole diving title from the NCAA championships in the 3-meter dive.
The Colorado native brought home the bronze medal at the conference championships, but continued to improve, and took home the gold at nationals.
"It's really special. Yeah, it's I mean, just like in life, there's there's going to be days where it goes really well, and there's going to be days where it's disappointing. But the important thing is to just keep coming back, keep showing up," said Dyer.
You can watch the full press conference with Collier Dyer and coaches in the video player above.
Despite tearing his rotator cuff back in November, Dyer and the coaching staff had the difficult decision to see if he could fully recover and come back, or if he should use a medical redshirt.
"We weren't sure if we were going to use his year of eligibility this year, we were trying to figure out if we needed to take a medical redshirt," said head coach Andrew Greavers. "We went into SEC championships, and we weren't even 100% sure he was going to dive."
"I wanted to just finish out college in the best way that I could, whether that was taking another year, or going the best that I could this year," said Dyer. "After talking to the doctors and the surgeon, I felt like my shoulder was in a good enough position to do as well as I could with what I had to work with."
Until this year, Dyer had never made a national final, and after squeaking through to the second day of competition, he strung together the best performance of anybody in the schools history, setting the program record with a score of 497.75.
"It was really special for me because it was just really fun to watch him be able to dive well," said diving coach Kyler Bogner. "He had struggled in 3-meter major competition, and we put a lot of work into it, and so for me it was just fun to see it come together."
Dyer now sets his sights on training for a spot on Team USA, and hopes to compete in the 2027 World Championships, and the 2028 Olympics.
