As winter sports come to a close, competition in the pool remains strong. Logan Hepner ’23 won first place for diving at the state meet on Saturday, April 12 at Oakland University.
Although Hepner displays such mastery in diving, Kim Hepner, L. Hepner’s mom, said he only started diving during his freshman year of high school and was a gymnast through eighth grade. However, his family has a history with the sport, and both of his parents dove at the collegiate level.
“He was done with gymnastics, and diving is such a natural progression (from gymnastics),” K. Hepner said. “Diving was a sport he could go into utilizing all the skills he’d already learned.”
To continue to improve his skills, L. Hepner dives five to six days a week, switching between training at high school and with his club team at Wolverine Diving in Ann Arbor. He works towards staying healthy all around, including lifting three times a week and maintaining a healthy diet. Despite his busy schedule, L. Hepner said he doesn’t often struggle with motivation.
“Diving is still pretty new to me,” L. Hepner said. “That makes it very exciting, and I’m always really excited to get back to diving after a break. I’m also a competitive person, and I don’t want to be beaten by somebody who I know doesn’t work as hard as I do.”
L. Hepner said he wants to continue diving past high school and play on a club team at a college like the University of Michigan. According to L. Hepner, there are many competitions he is working towards qualifying for after winning the state competition.
“The next thing I’ll do is compete at regionals,” L. Hepner said. “From there, I’ll try to qualify zones. Then, I’ll work to qualify for nationals for the one meter, three meter and platform.”
Ed Goodman, L. Hepner’s club coach at Wolverine Diving, said L. Hepner can attribute a lot of his success to his dedication to diving. He believes L. Hepner’s skillset is very suitable for the sport.
“First off, he’s just a gifted athlete,” Goodman said. “But there’s a lot of kids that are like that. What Logan has is he’s also very disciplined and has a lot of courage, which is a huge thing in this sport. That’s something you really can’t teach these kids. You can try to get them to do it, but Logan is a self-motivated individual, and that’s really going to serve him well in his future.”