High school swimming and diving: Avon diver Amanda Socha has big plans for her final season

Avon senior Amanda Socha knows this is it — her last year of high school diving and she wants to make it count. Socha is coming off a strong junior season in which she earned All-Ohio honors with an 11th-place finish at Canton McKinley's C.T. Branin Natatorium despite being seeded just 16th. The two-time state qualifier posted an 11-dive total of 417.10 points and finished within 8.95 points of being on the podium with a top-eight finish. "This year one of my main goals would be to make podium at state," said Socha, the two-time defending Southwestern Conference champ. "I'm working on trying to get harder dives. I've been working on tougher twisting dives. My hardest dive last year was my back 2½ twister (2.7 degree of difficulty). I'll definitely do that again. I'm working on piking over my back 1½ twist (2.6)." Socha is the first Lorain County girl to earn All-Ohio (top 16) in diving since the 2010-11 season when Avon Lake's Morgan Srail was second in Division I and Elyria Catholic's MacKenzie Tweardy and Avon's Alaina Cvetic were second and 14th, respectively, in Division II. As a sophomore, Socha was the No. 17 seed (405.55) heading into state, and finished 18th with a score of 277.60. She missed advancing to the finals (top 16) by 14.05 points , so last year's performance offered some redemption. Unfortunately her road back to Canton got off to a bit of a bumpy start. She came down with mono in mid-July, lost 20 pounds and had to temporarily shut down her training. She was given a clean bill of health by her doctor in September and her training regimen is now back to full speed. "I'm feeling a lot better," she said. "I'm back to the weight I was at. I think it motivated me because I lost almost all of my muscle. When I came back to diving in September it was really hard seeing how much better I got after the season (last February) and then seeing it all sort of go away. "But I've been working super hard the past few months lifting to get my muscle back and diving a lot to get back to where I was after last year's high school season." Before finding diving, Socha was a level 6 club gymnast. She competed for Great Lakes Gymnastics in Avon Lake for about seven years prior to joining Croy's Berea-Midpark Diving Club. She switched over to diving heading into the eighth grade in 2015. Socha has put many, many hours into her craft and works to keep it fun. "It's about having a balance of good practices but still having and enjoying your free time," Socha said. "To be able to be with your friends at practice helps." There's more to dive training than simply practicing and reworking on dives. "We do a lot of dry-land work and do workouts on the side of the pool," she said. "We do a lot of flipping on the trampoline." The mixture keeps things fresh. "I enjoy doing the dry land stuff, too," she said. "I like working out. Since we did flips on the trampoline at practice when I was in gymnastics, I like doing that here, too, because of my background in gymnastics." Five of last year's top 10 finishers at state graduated in June. That should help give Socha a foothold toward obtaining her goal of a podium finish. "I'm pretty excited to see what happens with her senior season," Avon dive coach Tim Croy said. "We just started training again in September. She is just now getting all of her strength back. I'm pretty excited to see where she goes now." Socha is still checking out colleges for next year. Cincinnati is the No. 1 school on her list. "Amanda's definitely the hardest working diver in the pool," Croy said. "She's working on three new dives. Hopefully, we'll have them ready to go some time in January." Contact Paul Heyse at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.