Champion Diver Dies After Car Accident : Crash: Members of the Nadadores swimming and diving team mourn the loss of teammate Christopher Vonk, 16, an Irvine High junior.

Members of the Nadadores swimming and diving team in Orange County on Sunday mourned the death of Christopher Vonk, a 16-year-old teammate from Irvine who was a junior champion diver.

Vonk died Saturday at 11:10 a.m. of head injuries suffered in a car accident in Mission Viejo about 2 p.m. last Thursday.

According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Vonk lost control of his 1966 Volkswagen while driving to diving practice in Mission Viejo. The car overturned on Trabuco Canyon Road, about a quarter-mile from Marguerite Parkway, and Vonk was thrown 50 feet from the vehicle, sheriff’s deputies said.

He was taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, where he died two days later.

Terry Stoddard, chief swim coach of the Nadadores, said Sunday that the team had been in shock and mourning since the accident.

“Everyone was hoping he’d pull through, and members of the diving team gathered together (Sunday) to remember him,” Stoddard said. “He was a great diver--one of the bright spots of the future--a real hard worker who, when he came to practice, just got right to work and got his job done.”

Vonk was a member of the Nadadores team that won the national championship at the U.S. Junior Olympic Diving Championships in both 1988 and 1989.

Janet Ely-Lagourgue, diving coach for the Nadadores, on Sunday said, “He loved the 10-meter and he was fearless on it. His death is a great loss to diving because he had a real future in national competition. He also was kind and a very fine person.”

The Irvine High School junior was also a member of the school’s surfing team. “He loved diving and surfing,” his mother, Kathy Vonk, said.

“He started diving when he was 9. You can’t go to the nationals (of diving competition) until you’re 11, and he went then, and he qualified every year since then,” she said. “I think his proudest moment was last spring, when he was picked for the National Junior Olympic travel team to go to Germany. He did quite a lot in his few years.”

Survivors include his parents, Kathy and Hank Vonk, and two sisters, Gretchen, 19, and Amy, 21.

The funeral will be Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Pacific View Chapel, 3500 Pacific View Drive, Newport Beach, followed by burial in Pacific View Memorial Park in that city. The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy take the form of donations to the Nadadores Diving Team.