On Jan. 13, Haddonfield Memorial High School junior diver Sophia Peifer had a record-setting day at the South Jersey Interscholastic Swimming Association 6-Dive Championships, winning the competition by more than 95 points and setting a new record for highest score with a 296.30.
Eight days later, Peifer had yet another record-setting day at the SJISA Jim Roach 11-Dive Championships, winning the event and setting a new record with a score of 545.65.
For most other divers, winning back-to-back meets and setting new records in the process would be an amazing accomplishment. For Peifer, it’s becoming routine.
Peifer has been winning competitions since her freshman year and shattering records since her sophomore year. She has won back-to-back NJSIAA individual diving championships and is looking to win a third straight title this month.
Peifer’s journey into diving began at the age of 7 when she was swimming at Wedgewood Swim Club. Peifer competed in both swimming and diving when she was younger, but found diving was her true calling.
“I started swimming and I was pretty bored,” Peifer said. “So I gravitated toward the diving team.”
Peifer also competed in gymnastics as a child and found a lot of similarities between it and diving. She also credits her participation in gymnastics to being a big part of how talented she has become as a diver.
Peifer is part of the Centennial Diving Club, based out of La Salle University. The prestigious diving club participates in national competitions and has been the home for some of the top high school divers in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Despite competing in large-scale competitions for Centennial, Peifer admits she wasn’t quite sure how good she would be when she first stepped on the high school diving board as a freshman in 2014.
“I wasn’t really sure how I’d do until I went to the meets,” Peifer said.
Peifer turned out to be way ahead of the competition from the start. As a freshman, she won the 2014 SJISA 6-Dive Championships by more than 80 points, coming just 29 points short of the competition’s record. At the Jim Roach 11-Dive Championships, she again defeated the competition by a large margin, winning by about 70 points over second-place senior Jenna Santora of Mainland Regional High School.
Peifer’s sophomore year in 2015 was when records began to fall. She first broke the Jim Roach 11-Dive Championship record Natalie Thomas of Cherokee High School set in 2005. She did even better at the state championships, defending her title from freshman year with a score of 566.95 and setting a new state record in the process.
The records have continued to fall in 2016, as Peifer finally eclipsed the 20-year-old record at the SJISA 6-Dive Championships, breaking the mark Cheryl Lemon of Gateway Regional High School set in 1995.
“It’s great because it shows the growth,” Peifer said of the records. “I practice a lot, so it shows how the work I put in has paid off.”
Practice makes perfect for Peifer. Her training regimen includes constantly perfecting the dives she already knows and learning increasingly harder dives, which have allowed her to continually increase her scores.
“I practice three to five times a week for two hours of practice,” Peifer said. “I usually try to run through a lot of my dives. New dives, they take awhile to get and master. You have to learn it and then put it in straight.”
In competitions, judges score divers based on the height of a dive, how straight it is and the form going into the air. That score is then multiplied by a degree of difficulty score given to each dive, which can go up to a 3.0. Peifer performs dives of high difficulty ranging from a 2.2 to a 2.7.
“It probably takes anywhere from three months to a year, (to learn a new dive),” Peifer said. “You can still compete it before then, it’s just how well you do it.”
Peifer believes she has what it takes to win a third straight state championship and hopes to continue her diving success in college after she graduates from HMHS in 2017. However, she doesn’t feel pressured to win. Her focus is to just perform the best she can.
“Whatever happens will happen,” Peifer said.
