The day before the IHSAA Boys Diving Regional and Crawfordsville senior Eli Reeves is still hard at work with his dry land conditioning.
A late season push that followed an injury landed Reeves on top of the podium last Saturday with a sectional title after scoring 360.7 points.
“With only really eight weeks of practice to be able to finish first at sectionals and improve my score from last year by I think 70 points means a lot,” Reeves said. “It’s been really really cool.”
Reeves’ patience and hard work during a shortened season has paid off in recent weeks.
“God has blessed me with a lot of things,” he said. “He’s blessed me with a great coach, great teammates, great family. He’s done a lot for me, helped me put in the work, helped me bounce back from my injury.”
Reeves says his biggest focus this season has been on the mental part of his preparation.
“While diving is a physical sport, it’s more of a mental sport for me,” Reeves said. “It comes with a lot of stress and anxiety, but with having to squeeze all that into a small amount a time it was pretty stressful, but we got through it. Learning to deal with the stress and anxiety, learning to deal with all the things that come with my diving. I think this has been one of my calmest years in terms of mentally how I’ve been able to deal with diving.”
Reeves will compete at the Plainfield Regional on Tuesday at 6 p.m. joining the top four divers from the Pike, Lawrence North, New Palestine and Avon Sectionals. The top-eight will advance to the state finals.
“The goal for tomorrow is to just do my best,” he said. “I don’t know what the other divers are like, I haven’t seen their scores, so honestly tomorrow whatever happens, just do my best. If I make it to state, I make it to state, if I don’t, I don’t. I just want to be able to go out there and dive my best.”
