Diving Miss Earley : NCAA Zone E Regionals Are Next for UC Irvine Athlete Who Follows Her Mother’s Blueprint

Arika Earley has followed that crayon line to the end of the board on each and every dive since early February.

Conni Pomeroy, the UC Irvine diving coach, has drawn that line to drive home a point. Earley, she says, tends to hit the right side of the board on her jumps.

“We needed to correct that and this gets her to focus on the left,” Pomeroy said.

Does it now?

“Not very much, but once in a while,” Earley said.

Still, when your coach is also your mother, you have little choice. Basically, you do what you’re told.

Earley, outranked by Pomeroy on two fronts, has followed that line--the one on the board and the one in her family--to a spot in this weekend’s NCAA Zone E regionals. She will compete in the one- and three-meter events in Colorado Springs, Colo., beginning Friday.

Whether Pomeroy will be allowed to provide color-coded directions for her daughter remains to be seen.

“She always has some new ideas, new ways to fix my dives,” Earley said. “No other coach thought of that one.”

It seems fitting, as there is no other family quite like this one, at least not in diving circles.

Rick Earley, Arika’s father, was a diver in the 1972 Olympics. Brian and Wendy Earley, Arika’s older siblings, competed for USC. And Pomeroy has been coaching nearly 30 years, ever since she was a 20-year-old student at Fresno State.

Then there’s Arika, somewhat the family rebel, who had the audacity to give up the sport when she was 11. She bucked more family tradition by not following Brian and Wendy to USC, where her father coached. Rick Earley is now an assistant with the Mission Viejo Nadadores.

Earley chose to attend Houston after graduating from Mission Viejo High in 1995. She returned this fall and enrolled at Irvine.

“I think Arika has tried to be her own person,” Pomeroy said. “She wanted to be a little different than her brother and sister. She didn’t necessarily want to follow in their footsteps.”

Yet, she might.

Brian Earley was NCAA platform champion in 1992 and ’94. Wendy Earley finished third in the platform competition in 1988.

Now comes Arika, who became the first female diver from Irvine to win a conference title by sweeping the three- and one-meter events in the Big West championships two weeks ago. Earley scored 450.30 points in the three-meter event and 382.80 in the one-meter competition.

“Arika jumps higher than either of them,” Pomeroy said, comparing her children. “That allows her to do more difficult dives and score higher. All she’s missing is the excessive drive her brother had.”

None in the family could actually be called a slacker.

Pomeroy was a diver in high school, then went into coaching when she was in college to “put bread on the table.” She coached club teams over the years before landing at Irvine in 1984.

She even trained her husband, Rick Earley, who returned from a two-year stint in the Army to prepare for the Olympics in the early 1970s. The two divorced when Arika was in junior high school, but the family has remained close.

When Earley called last fall and said she wanted to return home, Pomeroy was more than happy to have her back.

Earley had picked Houston in order to be on her own. She had strayed from the family path before, giving up diving when she was 11. But after trying track, volleyball and a few other sports, she returned to diving when she entered high school.

“I was scared,” Earley said. “I was moving up to a higher board and I wasn’t ready. It was fear.

“I was done. But then I realized that I did have the talent in diving. I could do all the stuff the other girls were doing.”

At Houston, Earley showed those skills. She qualified for the regionals last season, but she was not happy.

“I had a really great time at Houston, but it was too busy,” Earley said. “Practice was a lot tougher, the class schedule was harder and I had a bunch of athletes as roommates. There were a whole lot of people at our apartment all the time. I never could be alone to study.

“I missed my family and I missed California in general.”

If that sounds a little vague, then it sounds about right.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think I ever got a solid reason,” Pomeroy said. “I even went back to help her pack and see if there was something wrong. I think a lot of it has to do with our family. We’re very close.”

That she would compete for Irvine was natural. Pomeroy had a partial scholarship left, which covered tuition, and room and board were free.

All the move cost Earley was two months of training. She spent that time lifting weights until classes started at Irvine. Still, there were a few ground rules to work out.

“She calls me ‘Mom’ on the pool deck,” Pomeroy said. “It’s different for me, but it’s all right, I guess.”

“Actually, we were both very excited. I hadn’t trained her since she was a little girl. She got to see what it was like to train with me. That might have made her a little nervous.”

Nervous? Not really. OK, maybe the coloring books seemed a bit odd. Pomeroy brings them to meets so her divers would have some way to relax.

But when Pomeroy used the crayons to draw a line on the board, it did seem a bit peculiar to Earley. But again, she was outranked.

“All my life, she has been telling me she was going to cut off that side of the board,” Earley said. “She finally got fed up and drew the line.

“If you have the same coach, all you get is the same ideas over and over. This was a different way to get me thinking and fix my dives,” she said.

“Of course, when people come to compete at our school, they always ask, ‘What is this line doing here?’ ”