Diving into the upcoming swim season at Ocean View High School
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — This year, the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) has conjoined its respective school diving programs, which are now practicing together at Ocean View High School (OVHS) under the coaching of Kaeden Cogbill.
At the age of 20, Coach Cogbill began his own diving career at a Long Beach, California, club team. He went on to dive at Cypress College. He became the head diving coach at Marina High School from 2011 to 2020, but then put his high school coaching career on pause to help out Pepperdine University鈥檚 Division I dive team. When pandemic restrictions were lifted, Coach Cogbill ditched the two-hour commute and returned to Orange County. He decided to send his resume to OVHS and shortly thereafter, the rest of the schools in HBUHSD contacted Cogbill to take over the diving program for the whole district.
The hard-working coach has been striving to develop community support for diving in the Huntington Beach area for the last 11 years. The best way to do that now is through social media (check out @hbuhsddive on Instagram). Dive is a competitive sport, but Coach Cogbill stresses that sports are supposed to be fun in every practice.
COVID-19 was really a way of starting over for the HBUHSD dive program; it was actually what started this whole district dive team idea. Almost every high school diving program is usually made up of new divers. Getting club divers is few and far between, but with Costa Mesa鈥檚 Coast Divers springboard and platform diving club being nearby, Cogbill hopes to get more divers in the high school programs who started younger.
When asked what legacy he wants to leave behind with the Huntington Beach diving community, Coach responded, 鈥淚 don’t really need my name remembered or for people to think of me as some great diving coach. The point I want to drive across to my athletes is that hard work overcomes all, and I want them to take that point with them through the rest of their lives.鈥�
The HBUHSD dive program has so many talented divers, but a few to look out for this spring season are Lia Borja, Niamh Hughes, Justice Moore, Joel Gil, Delaney Murphy, Katie Neumann, and Willow Murphy.
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