Texas A&M diving's Jay Lerew details Joslyn Oakley's meteoric rise

Three-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year Jay Lerew has built a diving program at Texas A&M that attracts top talent from around the world. On Thursday, Lerew joined TexAgs Radio to discuss Joslyn Oakley's rise as the A&M freshman has qualified for Team USA.

Key notes from Jay Lerew interview

• I’ve won three SEC Coach of the Year awards, and that goes back some to the Big 12 as well. Texas A&M has some world-class divers. I’m not sure if everyone is aware of it, but it’s quite the tradition here at Texas A&M. We’ve had Grant Nel from Australia, who was a many-time Big 12 champion and many-time NCAA finalist and an Olympic team member. We had another Australian, Jaele Patrick, that did the same thing. She was an NCAA champion. We just seem to get lucky in recruiting, and people are attracted to our program.
   
• This season was pretty good. It was a rebuilding season. I recruited some new freshmen, and we have some new divers that are coming up. Still, we had some good results. We had some top-five finishes at the NCAA Championships this year. Joslyn Oakley is a freshman that is coming on. She was an All-American on both boards this year and has gone on to make the World Team at the United States Nationals this year.
   
• To qualify for Team USA, it’s just one meet in West Virginia. It’s the national championships, and you have to get first or second. If you can do that, you’re on the team. Oakley did that.
   
• Oakley has a super amount of talent. She’s really strong and smart. She knows what she’s doing. She’s crazy competitive. She’s like an animal in competition. She doesn’t love to practice, and she drives me crazy in practice. In meets, she comes up big. I’m always on her in practice, but in the meet, it clicks. She’s just one of those. It’s a gift.
   
• You have to know your athlete well and how to push the buttons well. Everybody is different, and in diving, it’s all in the brain.
   
• Oakley is in Japan right now at training camp. You never know how the world meet is going to go. She’ll be on the one-meter springboard, which will be a good introduction for her to the world stage. She has difficult dives from a low level. She’s really good at them, and she could do well.
   
• Alyssa Clairmont was awesome. She was a leader on our team. She is from Canada and was a triple threat. She would dive in all three events, which is rare. The platform is a different animal, and it can beat the heck out of you. We consider the platform a contact sport. When you hit that water 60-80 times a week at 40 mph, it will beat you up. She handled that very well. She was good at all three events and did great things for our program.
   
• The personalities of divers is that they’re all wackos. Divers are sort of crazy people. The personalities are all over the board. The captain has to reel them all in, and Clairmont was able to get everybody on board with everyone else. She got them to help each other and brought the whole thing together. It’s important to have that on your team.
   
• I was a diver in high school. I was also a professional skier. Coming out of college, I was supposed to be a P.E. teacher, but I didn’t want to do that. I started being a ski bum and doing freestyle skiing. I won a car and $10,000 in my first freestyle event doing aerial acrobatics. I always kept my hand in diving, and a thing came up at Colorado State that would allow me to get a graduate degree and become a coach. I did that, and things went really well there. I went to different programs and eventually started getting kids to the world level. I had a private program in Orlando for 15 years and got to be the Olympic head coach. It blossomed, and then A&M popped up out of nowhere. I came to College Station, and John Thornton hired me. I’ve been here for 13 years now.
   
• Diving is a tough thing. There are a lot of programs, though. My wife, Wendy Reich, is a Canadian Olympian. She runs a program right now at the Rec. She has produced some divers. It’s a hard sport. There is fear and splatters involved. Getting kids beyond that is tough, but the strong ones survive. We’re looking for kids that have the flare for something that gets the adrenaline going.
   
• Next season is going to be interesting. We’ve got Allen Bottego, who is very talented. He can do dives that nobody else in the world can do, and he’s coming on strong. He was originally a gymnast and didn’t dive very much. He has already gotten to the NCAAs. I’m expecting a lot out of him. We have a kid from Lubbock, Rhett Hensley, that is a platform guy. He has the mindset and went to the NCAA finals this year. Victor Povzner is going to be a senior, and he’s a Canadian national champion. I think he has the chance to win at the NCAAs next year. We also have Takuto Endo, a kid from Japan, and is really coming into his own. We’re very strong on the men’s side.
   
• With the women’s side, we’ve got Oakley. We also have Mayson Richards, who is a former world youth champion. She quit diving for a while, but she’s back and is really happy here after transferring from Arkansas. We’ve also got the recruiting trail going on the women’s side.