The Sudbury swim community misses the Laurentian University Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool.

Those who have enjoyed any kind of interest in diving, as a sport, in the nickel city, have missed the facility longer ... much, much longer.

As most are well aware, the doors to the L.U. pool have been shuttered since March of 2020, for a whole variety of well documented reasons. The end result is that members of the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club, the Sudbury Artistic Swim Club, Masters Swimming Sudbury and a handful of other regular users have been required to make alternate arrangements for the past three years or so.

By contrast, based on the best available data that I have been able to unearth, the Laurentian University Diving Club last saw the light of day somewhere around the mid-eighties – or almost forty years ago now.

At its height, the club featured somewhere between 20 and 30 divers, including some who went on to rank among the very best in their age group in the country. “I got into it when I was maybe ten years old,” said Larry Ross, just one of the ultra-athletic offspring of local curler and basketball star Chucker Ross.

“Before that, I had done some gymnastics. We had people on that diving team between the ages of eight and 18.”

In fact, a Sudbury Star story from the seventies highlighted the Ontario Summer Age-Group Diving Championships taking place at Laurentian, with the local contingent including Karey Ross (sister to Larry – age 12 at the time), Cathy Crang (10), Kathy Rannie (11), Stephanie Smith (12) and Charles Kettle (13).

Also making their way to Sudbury for that event was Kathy Keleman, highlighted as “having national team potential” and eventually representing Canada at the 1982 and 1986 Commonwealth Games (winning a pair of bronze medals) as well as the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

No less than 22 clubs from across Ontario made their way to what was then a state-of-the-art athletic facility.

The driving force, on a local level, was a university professor by the name of Ross Hetherington, a man who coached the Saskatoon Diving Club in the sixties before eventually moving to northern Ontario. “I’m not sure that he first established the club – but he was very patient with us, helping us build that confidence,” suggested Larry Ross.

By its very nature, diving requires patience, following a step by step process that (hopefully) leads to the skill-set required to perform those bodily contortions that have amazed fans of the sport for years.

“It’s one of those sports where you can perfect some of the more simple dives: a swan dive – front dive in the layout position; then a back dive in layout and then an inward dive. You build confidence being able to execute those effectively. That allows you to start doing the more difficult dives with somersaults and such, the one and a half’s and two and a half’s off the one metre and three metre boards.”

Much like his earlier involvement with gymnastics, Larry Ross would find out quickly that the price to be paid for the slightest of miscalculations could be hurtful – in more ways than one.

“It was always humbling when you miss a dive and belly flopped,” he said. “You weren’t only bruising your ego, you’re bruising some of your private parts too.”

Jokes aside, there is a certain fearlessness that accompanies those who venture into this sport on any kind of serious basis – along with at least one other key motivator in the case of Larry Ross.

“I enjoyed the competition,” said the man who has resided in the GTA for quite some time now. “To compete at the provincial or national level, you had to have those dives – so I pushed myself, quite a bit.”

Within a few years, he would advance to nationals, eventually selected to represent Canada at an international competition in Texas. “It was a beautiful facility, but outdoors,” Ross recalled. “As Canadians, we had never experienced that before. That was an interesting adjustment to be diving off a ten metre board with the wind howling and seeing waves in the pool.”

Though she would not reach those same heights, L.U. School of Education Master Lecturer Carolyn Crang carries with her the memories of a club that often gathered several children from the same family together (Brenda, Larry and Karey Ross; Cathy and Carolyn Crang; Jennifer, Mark and Rick Whissell).

“I started when I was in grade four and dove for three years,” said Carolyn Crang, who still would venture up on the L.U. towers during her time as a student at the university, and even later as she taught at the school. “We went to nationals and I remember going to New Jersey on this Ontario – New Jersey exchange.”

“This was no slouch of a club; the people there were good divers” – and apparently quite committed.

“In the summer, my sister would go to an outdoor pond where they were coached by a lady (Marnie) in Woodstock,” said Crang. “She had a 10 metre platform in their backyard.”

Unfortunately, the run of the Sudbury club was short-lived.

Following the 1977 Ontario Winter Games, Larry Ross packed it in and took up, not all that surprisingly, curling as his new winter sport of choice, qualifying for provincials on a few different occasions and continuing with the sport as a member of the Toronto Cricket Club as he made his way down south.

Not that his time in diving was ever completely erased from the nostalgic archives of his mind.

“There’s the odd time I will still try something and it will kind of come back; muscle memory kicks in a bit,” he said. “You try and not embarrass yourself.”

And you find somewhere other than your old stomping grounds on the campus of Laurentian University to give it a shot.

Otherwise, like the swimmers, you’re still waiting for water in the pool.