As he plunges into the depths of the water, the crowd’s cheers erupt in a muffled symphony. Emerging from the water, Brady Stanton feels a wave of astonishment crash over his body. As he reads over the judge’s scores, Stanton immediately realizes he has broken the six-dive record. But that is just one more thing the young diver can add to his list of accomplishments, including a gold medal at states and a commitment to continue his diving career at Yale. 

If anyone had told North Penn senior, Brady Stanton, a few years back that his diving career would have gotten him a state medal, a place in the record books, and an offer from Yale, he would have thought you were crazy. Considering Stanton only began his diving career five years ago, all these accomplishments in such a short time show Stanton’s dedication and passion for the sport. 

“I just really love the sport. Diving is the most fun thing I have done,” Staton shared. “I am currently practicing every day. Right now it’s high school season so we practice every weekday unless there is a meet. Then I do club practice on the weekends and our club pool doesn’t have a three-meter board so we drive up to Drexel in the mornings for practice,” Stanton explained.

Before taking up diving, Stanton was a competitive gymnast who quickly found a love for learning new skills and building upon the fundamentals of the sport. Unfortunately, Stanton began to learn over time that gymnastics wasn’t necessarily the right sport for him. 

“I was a gymnast a long time before I got into diving and many of the fundamentals are the same, so that helped me a lot. I just enjoy diving so much because I enjoyed gymnastics but what was difficult about gymnastics was I kept getting hurt,” Staton explained. “I ended up spraining both my ankles and breaking my wrist. I just dealt with way too many injuries and it got to the point where I knew I needed to move to another sport”. 

While giving up gymnastics was hard, Stanton quickly learned how much easier diving was on his body. 

“Gymnastics is really hard on your body because of all the landings. When you dive however the worst that can happen is you flop on the water and it stings for a little but then a few minutes later you are fine. It’s super fun to be able to do a huge, crazy dive and if I flop, I flop, it doesn’t really matter,” Stanton said laughing. 

While searching for another sport, Stanton knew that he wanted something similar to gymnastics. He wanted something that gave him the same joy and satisfaction of learning a new skill in gymnastics. After talking to a few other

ex-gymnasts, Stanton eventually came across diving. 

“I knew a couple of gymnasts who had done the gymnastics to diving swap. It is very common for gymnasts to get into diving and they are typically really good at diving so I thought ‘why not’,” Staton revealed. 

After deciding to make the switch from gymnastics to diving, Stanton met with North Penn’s diving coach and quickly formed a bond with him. 

“I first got into diving at Germantown Academy swim club, and I have been there for about five or so years now. However, the diving coach at North Penn, Kyle, is amazing. He really got me into the sport as well as my club coaches,” Staton shared. “When I was first starting to dive, Kyle did private lessons with me at Montco which was where I was doing gymnastics. They have a board that goes onto mats with a belt attached to it and that was where I learned the fundamentals of how the board works and how you need to jump”. 

Over the years, Staton’s progression seemed slow. It wasn’t until his Junior year that everything seemed to click. 

“Freshman year was weird because of Covid and I was also still more of a gymnast than a diver at that point. Sophomore year, I was still just an okay diver, I placed 11th at states that year. It wasn’t really until last year that I felt I got good at the sport,” Stanton claimed. “I started working really hard, doing workouts on my own, lifting weights, and trying to work on the basics. Last year I didn’t lose a single postseason championship meet”.

Once Stanton found his rhythm with diving, his success continued to escalate from there. Eventually, Stanton achieved his first big accomplishment, which was winning states.

“I didn’t quite expect to win states. I knew I could if I hit everything and executed everything well, but it was really sudden,” Stanton shared. 

Although winning states is a thrilling experience, Stanton was more interested in the platform it gave him to speak on a major issue within the diving community that he is very passionate about.  

“The best part for me was when they interviewed me right after, like thirty seconds after I got off the board, and that was really cool because I got a chance to speak about diving. At the time some goofy things were going on in PIAA where they changed some rules that negatively impacted the sport, so I got the opportunity to talk about that,” Stanton expressed. 

To Stanton’s surprise, the interview ended up helping make big strides in changing the new PIAA rules. 

“Usually, you would have to be able to do an easy dive as well as a challenging dive from every one of the categories, which include front, back, reverse, inward, and twisters. The PIAA reduced the amount of difficult dives required to make it to states, so you didn’t need to be as well-rounded,” Stanton explained. “These new standards were not the best for high school diving because high school divers tend to not be able to do reverse or back dives very well, so with a system where you don’t need to be good at those dives to be rewarded, it becomes unfair for those divers who are more well-rounded. But after getting the opportunity to talk about these rule changes they actually changed the rules back this year.”

As soon as Stanton began to excel in his diving career, schools started reaching out in hopes of maybe recruiting Stanton to join their diving team and compete at the collegiate level. 

“During the recruiting process, I was talking to Yale, RIT, MIT, and Cornell. My brother is at Cornell and I liked the campus, I thought it was beautiful,” Stanton revealed. 

While Stanton fell in love with the campus at Cornell, he fell in love with the diving team and staff at Yale even more. 

“Although I loved the campus at Cornell, I just didn’t get the same feeling with the team that I got at Yale.

After achieving these two major accomplishments, Stanton was ready to move on and achieve his next one, and it didn’t take him very long. 

“My biggest goal for my senior year was to get the six-dive record for North Penn’s pool, and I did that at the first meet,” Stanton shared with a smile. “Looking ahead, I think it would be fun to win states again. One thing I also think would be cool would be to get the overall dive record for the championship meet. My club coach currently holds that record so I think it would be funny to beat that”.

With these goals in mind, Stanton emphasizes the importance of not putting too much pressure on himself to achieve these goals. Instead, he finds it more important to keep growing as a diver and make himself proud. 

“I want to do the best that I can rather than compare myself to other people or try to beat other people. I would rather beat my records and just compete against myself,” Stanton explained. “But overall I think what is most fulfilling for me is that I do all of my dives well. Even if I don’t win, I just want to know I performed my best”.