Members of the Kingston High School (KHS) girls’ diving team are frustrated with what they see as the school district’s mismanagement of the installation of diving boards in the swimming pool, including two years of delays and a height miscalculation some say led to injury.
During a meeting of the board of education held on Wednesday, October 9, KHS swimming and diving team athlete Sofia Grande said she discovered that the “two-year-old certified boards” in the KHS pool are eight inches short of a meter in height.
“This causes many problems,” Grande said. “We have been unable to dive at our home meets, and we’ve only been able to dive at three of our nine meets. This is costing us points and causing us to lose meets.”
Grande said that because of the height disparity, diver rotations are off.
“At away meets with a proper one-meter board all of our dives are way off rotation and timing because we are practicing at the wrong height,” Grande said. “This is very dangerous. We don’t have as much time as we think we should and can hit the water the wrong way causing unnecessary injury. In fact, I got a concussion because of this. Since then I’ve had to dial back the difficulty of my dives to more simple ones with less points.”
Grande’s teammate McKenna Boye read a letter she’d written to the district’s director of physical education, health and athletics Rich Silverstein, in which she pleaded for the district to correct the problem before her entire senior season is over.
“I know you knew about this in February and it is my senior season,” Boye said. “My sister Kalie Boye was not able to dive her senior season as well because you decided to redo the pool and not give us a pool to practice at or have any of our home meets that had diving boards…It was very upsetting not being able to see her compete to her full ability or senior season and I would not like that to happen to me even though it has already started and now almost ended.”
Boye said student-athletes were told by Silverstein that the diving boards would be ready for the start of their fall 2024 season, which has not happened. With two home meets remaining, including senior night on October 15, it seemed unlikely the issue would be corrected before the season finished.
Grande also placed the blame on Silverstein for the issue not being rectified.
“It has been eight months since this was brought to his attention and the board has not been fixed,” Grande said. “He says they are on backboard. But has he looked into other companies or places for us to practice?”
Grande, a junior, said that while, the pool was being repaired during her freshman season, swimmers were able to practice at the YMCA, but coaches had to drive members of the diving team to Newburgh Free Academy to practice.
“It saddens me that our competitors support us more than our own district,” Grande said. “My freshman year was ruined, my sophomore year was robbed, my junior year was ruined, and my teammate McKenna Boye’s senior year was ruined. All because of the athletic director and other members of administration.”
Grande added that the lack of diving opportunities may impact her ability to secure college scholarships.
“All I want is that I have that chance,” she said. “At a previous board meeting it was mentioned that this problem is a silly issue. This is not a silly issue. This is our safety and our future.”
District superintendent Paul Padalino said the issue arose from a miscalculation in the construction of the pool, when the diving board platform was built to measure against the depth of the pool’s original water depth. He acknowledged that the district could have done a better job of correcting the problem.
“This should have been done more quickly,” he said. “I think we should have had our foot on the gas pedal three months ago.”
Padalino also defended Silverstein.
“It’s not the athletic director’s fault,” he said. “The athletic director didn’t build the pool.”
Padalino said the district was trying to fix the problem before the end of the season, adding that it might only be a temporary fix, one which would have to meet competitive standards.
“We can’t just order something off of Amazon,” he said.
A permanent redesign of the platform would be a time-consuming process.
“If we have to do that, it will not happen (before the end of the season),” Padalino said. “That takes new architectural drawings, new specs that we put out to the vendor. The vendor has to review the rebuild, get prices, do all those things that we have to do. And depending on the price, we probably have to solicit three bidders. So it’s not as simple as I get three of my guys to go in there and rebuild a diving board. It’s not a diving board in your backyard.”
Padalino said that the district would endeavor to move forward more quickly than it has up to this point.
“It’s our fault and we’re going do everything we can to fix it,” he said. “We should’ve done it faster and all we can do is work as hard as we can and hope to make that happen for girls for the last couple of weeks.”
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