Warshaw to represent Glendale, nation at Junior Pan American Championships

When the Junior Pan American Championships get underway Thursday in Matanzas, Cuba, national interest will include some local flavor as 11-year-old Glendale resident Alexandra Warshaw will represent the stars and stripes.

Warshaw, a Rose Bowl Aquatics product and Balboa Elementary School student, will compete in the girls’ 11-and-under one-meter dive and platform diving competitions, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday.

“It’s really fun to make it,” Warshaw said Saturday afternoon, a day before departing to Cuba. “I was hoping to make it, but I wasn’t expecting to. It’s pretty hard to do it.”

It’s so difficult to qualify that Warshaw is the only representative from Rose Bowl Aquatics and is one of two Southern California competitors among the 24 Team USA divers, joining friend and former Rose Bowl Aquatics teammate Elena Yeh, an Alhambra resident.

En route to advancing to Matanzas, Warshaw finished sixth (180.90 points) at the Junior Region 12 Championships, first (224.45) at the National Preliminary Zone Championships and seventh (203.85) at USA Diving National Championships in Orlando, Fla. in August, all in the one-meter dive.

While her selection to the Pan Am Championships wasn’t always a lock in the one-meter dive, the same couldn’t be said about the platform, where Warshaw took second to Stanford Diving’s Supisara Shauntel Lim, 189.95-186.30, on Aug. 10 in Orlando.

“It wasn’t really stressful, but it was a little bit,” Warshaw said of competing in Orlando. “It was really fun and we all supported each other.”

Warshaw said she owed a fair amount of her success to Rose Bowl Coach Isabell Saakian.

“She pushes you a lot and she can yell sometimes,” Warshaw said through a giggle, “but she’s hard on us because she’s good and she wants to get the best out of us.”

As for goals, Warshaw isn’t necessarily looking for victories as much as she is hoping for top scores and great memories outside the pool.

“I want to have a lot of fun, maybe we’ll get a chance to go to the beach,” she said. “On the platform, I believe my personal best is 206 and on the one-meter, I think it’s 226. So, I definitely want to do better than that.”

Warshaw, who swept the Crown Valley Divers AAU Red, White and Blue National Championships in one-meter (181.20), three-meter (197.15) and platform (184) dives in Laguna Nigel in March, will commence Saturday in the one-meter dive along with Yeh.

On Sunday, Warshaw and Yeh will compete in the platform competition.

Warshaw flew out of Los Angeles on Sunday morning to Miami with her parents Robert and Barbara, who will be seeing her, but may not be communicating much.

In Miami, Alexandra Warshaw joined the U.S. delegation and ventured on Monday to Havana, Cuba, where she will be staying in the team’s official hotel, one that’s different than that of her parents.

“We’re very excited, but if there’s one big difference with this competition compared to all the others, it’s the travel arrangements,” said Robert Warshaw, whose 16-year-old daughter Lauren is also a competitive swimmer. “She’s going to be traveling as part of the U.S. Team and will be staying at their hotel, traveling on their plane and moving in their group and we won’t get a chance to really talk much.

“So, we can watch practices and the competition, of course, but we won’t be able to really speak to her and that’s different when you’re talking about an 11-year-old girl.”

Despite some of the travel frustrations, Robert Warshaw said he’s looking forward to this weekend’s events.

“I’m 54 and it’s funny that I’ve told my daughter that at 11 she’s better at diving than I’ve ever been at anything in my entire life,” said Warshaw, a 20-year Glendale resident. “More than anything, I’m proud of her and I just want her to have a good time.”