Brennen Keeps Diving Afloat in Sunset League

While diving has been eliminated in almost every high school league in Orange County, it has survived, and flourished, in the Sunset League.

Marina swim Coach Dave Pickford said the reason is simple.

“Larry Brennen,” Pickford said. “He’s the reason diving has remained strong in the Sunset League. He’s the diving guru.”

Brennen, the diving guru of the Sunset League actually has no affiliation with any of the teams in the league. He is a teacher at Westminster and no longer coaches the sport, but his presence is still felt.

On Thursday afternoons during the season, Brennen can be found at Fountain Valley, where the league diving meets are contested each week. He is the meet supervisor, a judge and even handles the public-address duties.

It’s a time-consuming job, but Brennen said it’s necessary.

“The reason I do it is because I was afraid the league was getting frustrated with diving,” he said. “The event was taking too long in dual meets and there were a lot of people who didn’t know what they were doing. Besides, I love doing it.”

This season, the Sunset League experimented with a new format for diving. Instead of holding the event during the dual meet, which are run on Tuesdays, the divers compete on the previous Thursday at Fountain Valley.

All 29 divers in the league compete during the meet, with the points added to their team’s scores in the dual meet. Westminster is the only league school that does not have any divers.

The Sunset and Freeway leagues are the only two in Orange County to include the diving points with the dual and league championship meets.

“It was a benefit as far as the divers were concerned,” Fountain Valley girls’ swim Coach Debbie Kelly said. “They weren’t thrown into the middle of the swim meet. They had their own competition.”

To run the meet, the Sunset League coaches turned to Brennen, who was qualified for the chore.

Brennen was a three-time All-American diver at Cal State Los Angeles. He was also responsible for building the diving program at Edison, where he coached from 1976-80.

He also is a member of the Southern Section advisory committee for swimming and the high school representative for the Southern Pacific Assn., which oversees diving in Southern California.

“We are lucky to have a guy like Larry around,” Pickford said. “He’s been involved with diving for a zillion years. He runs the diving meet efficiently.”

The format has worked well, but only because Brennen and the league’s four diving coaches have taken an active role.

Brennen and the coaches are the judges during the league meets.

The high and low scores do not count, as in the Olympics. The totals are then multiplied by the degree of difficulty of the dive.

All of the league’s coaches said diving will remain strong as long as the supporters of the event are active. Besides Brennen, Fountain Valley’s Lou Riley and Marina’s Greg Price have been involved in Sunset League diving for several years.

Riley has been the diving coach at Fountain Valley for the last five years and formerly coached the swim team at Edison, where Brennen was his diving coach. Price has been the diving coach at Marina for the last 10 years.

“We just have people who are interested in diving,” Riley said. “We put in the time to get kids interested in it. I don’t think there’s another league that has as many diving coaches as ours.”

Two of the Sunset League’s four diving coaches are college students, both of whom competed for Cal State Long Beach. Susan Stewart coaches at Huntington Beach and Garrett Sisley at Edison.

In a effort to keep diving alive, two league schools share a coach. Price coaches Marina and Ocean View.

“I was a little concerned at first because Ocean View only had a couple of divers,” Pickford said. “I was worried that our kids would get cheated a little in training. But Greg has done a good job working with both teams.”

Almost all of the league coaches approve the new format of holding diving meets separately from swim meets. They said it has even increased interest in diving.

“It gave it more of an invitation atmosphere,” Kelly said. “I think it has really promoted the sport.”

Fountain Valley has benefitted the most from diving in recent years. The Barons had 20 divers in the program this year, six who have qualified for today’s Southern Section championships.

“I think separating the meet has helped us hang on to diving,” Riley said. “I just keep my fingers crossed that it remains this way.”

It will, at least as long as Brennen is around.

“I’m not saying diving will be around as a long as I’m around, that would be presumptuous,” Brennen said. “But as long as I remain active, I am going to promote the sport. And when I step down (from the advisory committee), I going make sure we get another diving person in there.”