UW-GREEN BAY — The season for U-W Green Bay swimming and diving team has come to a close, but one for diver on the team, his season isn’t done just yet and he’s trying to close out his career with his best performance in a place he’s all too familiar with.
“He is driven by his desire to perfect his craft,” said UW-Green Bay diving coach Tom Stover.
The pool is Miles Rohrbaugh's laboratory.
“I experiment,” he said. “I try new things, if they don’t work out, I see what is the most strategic way to proceed.”
For the one and three meter diver there’s so many things that can go wrong in the second and a half that he’s competing.
“Your mind is racing in all these different directions during your dive, but you got to learn to keep yourself calm and keep your eyes focused on what the end result should be,” he said.
And the 5th year grad student is never satisfied when he comes out of the pool after a dive.
“It’s a constant chase for perfection,” he said. “You’re always trying to make little tweaks. Improve in every tiny area.”
But rep after rep after rep, the Minnesota native has slowly perfected his craft.
“He has been greater than we had hoped he could be and that’s because every year he was focused on getting better,” Stover said.
This year, he broke the school’s three meter record by over 10 points.
“He knew – he knew he had it,” said Stover. “You can feel it when you know your performance is right as a diver.”
And as Rohrbaugh gets set to finish his diving career here at UW-GB, He’s hoping to get in the top 16 at the NCAA Zone Diving Championships in his home state. It will be his fourth time at the competition. but he has never cracked the top 16. However, it’s a pool he’s familiar with this time.
“For him to come full circle and finish up at the University of Minnesota, where his high school state meet was held. that would be wonderful,” Stover said.
“It would be the pinnacle of my career,” said Rohrbaugh.
