Jaele Patrick flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
It's the landing that needs a little tweaking.
"She looks beautiful in the air, not just acrobatic. She's powerful and high and makes everything look like a Baryshnikov of ballet," new Texas A&M diving coach Jay Lerew said of his junior diver from Australia. "Her biggest deal right now is getting in the water. She needs to get in the water a little cleaner and then her scores will jump huge."
By no means is Patrick awkward getting into the water. It's just that if there are more points to be had on her 1-meter and 3-meter springboards, it's at the end of her dives.
"It's definitely a technique thing," the 5-foot-3 All-American said. "My struggle in diving is my entries. Everyone says I have beautiful tops but if you can't put an entry on a dive, because it's the last thing a judge sees, you are not going to do great."
Patrick has been pretty darn good lately, breaking her own A&M records in the 1-meter and the 3-meter in the Aggies' last meet.
In the 3-meter, Patrick had eclipsed her previous mark after the fifth of six dives and finished with a score of 412.35. Patrick followed that with a pool record of 351.15, a mark set last year by Houston's Anastasia Pozdniakova at the NCAA Championships.
"I wasn't looking to break any records or anything, it kind of just happened," Patrick said. "I wanted to do a [personal best] and it just happened to work that I beat my school record and the pool record, so it was kind of nice."
The record-setting day came on the heels of a more impressive showing in Australia, where Patrick placed second in the 1-meter and fourth in the 3-meter at her country's open diving championship in late January.
The showing qualified Patrick to represent Australia at an international grand prix in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this summer and the opportunity to compete in the Commonwealth Games.
It also gave her confidence for making Australia's Olympic team, which takes two divers in the 3-meter, her specialty.
"I'm definitely within range," Patrick said. "If I work hard and I perfect those things Jay has been talking about, my saves [bringing a dive back to vertical] and my entries, then I've got just as much chance as the other ones."
But first, Patrick has her sights set on the Big 12 Championships and then NCAAs.
Patrick is especially looking forward to the Big 12 meet, because it's being held at A&M this week and she missed last year's competition when she was back home at another national meet.
"I didn't like missing out on Big 12s last year," she said. "You sacrifice stuff in Australia and sacrifice things here and I kind of balance between them. It was devastating, though, because this is my team here and we need all the points we can get so we can do what we do, win and do well."
Although Lerew hasn't known Patrick long, what she's accomplished over the past couple of months comes as no surprise to the former U.S. Olympic diving coach.
"There are maybe a dozen girls in the world that can do the degree of difficulty that is needed to be a world-level diver and she's one of them, and she's one that makes them easier than anybody else," Lerew said. "When you look for a diver, you look for strength, quickness and power. She's got all three and an elegance, too. She has that fourth aspect."
Patrick also has the desire to broaden the sport on the women's side.
"I kind of want to raise the bar when it comes to diving" Patrick said. "[Women] tend to stay within the box and someone needs to step outside the box and that's my goal in this sport, to be able to push it and to be able to do the boys' dives that the girls just aren't doing.
"Girls know they can hit a dive for [a score of] 7 and 8, so they stay on that dive instead of pushing the boundary. And I think there are thousands of divers out there doing the same dive, so why not try to do harder dives and push the boundaries a little, up the mark a little?"
Patrick's favorite dive -- and one of her more difficult ones -- is a front-3 1/2 pike. Patrick plans on adding more difficulty, more twists and somersaults to her repertoire of dives this summer so she can perform them routinely by the time the important competitions come around next season.
If she's successful, Patrick will be at a level that only a handful of women will be able to match. Lerew believes Patrick has already made inroads toward those goals.
"She does hard dives, man's dives," Lerew said. "With her physical ability and eloquence in the air ... with a rip entry, she can beat everybody. She is an entry away from 500-plus scores."
*
NOTES -- Texas comes in as the top-ranked team in both divisions. The men are No. 1 and the women are No. 3. The only other Top 10 team is the A&M women at No. 7. ... A&M landed 23 student-athletes on the 2010 Academic All-Big 12 swimming & diving team. Sophomore Lauren Clifford, sophomore Alyssa Conner, senior Ella Doerge, senior Julia Wilkinson and senior Sarah Woods received special recognition for perfect 4.0 grade point averages. The rest of the honorees were (first team) senior Alia Atkinson, junior Melanie Dodds, senior Melissa Hain, senior Haley Haynes, senior Kristen Heiss, junior Casey Hurrell-Zitelman, junior Hannah Kinder, sophomore Rita Medrano, senior Emily Neal, junior Maria Sommer, senior Emily Watson, senior Jason Bergstrom, senior Henry Stevens, senior Casey Strange, (second team), senior Rebekah Love, senior Caroline Maxvill, junior Andres Van Dam and sophomore Amini Fonua.
Notice about comments:
Theeagle.com is pleased to offer readers the ability to comment on stories. We expect our readers to engage in lively, yet civil discourse. theeagle.com cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. Responsibility for the statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not theeagle.com. If you find a comment that is objectionable, please click "report abuse" and we will review it for possible removal. Please be reminded, however, that in accordance with our Terms of Use and federal law, we are under no obligation to remove any third party comments posted on our website. Full terms and conditions can be read here.
Aggiesports.com is proud to offer our users enhanced commenting features. You can now build user-to-user connections, follow friends’ recent posts, add an avatar that fits your personality and more. If you have posted here before you’ll need to sign up again, and if you’ve never posted start now by signing up! If you've already registered for the new comments on www.theeagle.com then just use your Eagle username to log in and start commenting.