Three stories up, USC’s Allyson Nied excels on the high dives

This is the first in an occasional series of articles highlighting USC freshman athletes who are making an early impact.

For most people, jumping off the equivalent of a three-story building into a pool of water would be frightening, but South Carolina freshman diver Allyson Nied is fearless.

Nied, who grew up in Tampa, Fla., specializes in diving off the 10-meter platform and was recruited to the USC diving team because of her success in that event in high school.

“I had done only one-meter and three-meter springboard up until I was going into age 16,” Nied said. “Then I gave that (10-meter platform) a try and my first time competing, I made it to nationals.”

In her first season at USC, Nied has made little splash with her dives, but a big impact. Competing in a meet against divers from Georgia Tech, Duke and Michigan in Atlanta in January, she won the platform competition with a score of 245.45. She was named the SEC Women’s Diver of the Week, the first Gamecock freshman to win that honor in the 2015-16 season.

Nied’s success as a freshman is especially impressive because the Carolina Natatorium, where the team practices, doesn’t have a 10-meter platform. To prepare for 10-meter events, Nied practices on the five-meter and lower-level springboards.

“I just basically do a lot of dry land, lead ups and preparation to do the 10-meter dives,” she said. “Just doing that so much and working on the technique of the lower skills translates to the higher skills.”

While the absence of a 10-meter platform presents its challenges, USC diving Coach Todd Sherritt has found a few workarounds.

“What I try to do is make my athletes stronger than the person down the street,” Sherritt said. “We can out-condition in the areas that they can’t and that transfers to good performances up there.”

Still, the 10-meter platform can cause serious injuries if divers don’t land correctly.

“When you’re up that high, to be honest with you, you can get some internal bleeding if you don’t land right,” he said. “You can blow a thumb out and just the smack in general doesn’t feel good. You can get jerked or you can get sprains in your neck, sprain your back and so forth. You have to be really careful and that’s why I’m pretty meticulous on how I build their platform so when they do get up there, the risk of getting hurt is minimized.”

Nied is one of the few freshman divers who has the strength and courage needed to excel at 10-meter platform dives.

“Allyson’s real long and lean and she’s extremely pretty in the air when she rotates,” said Sherritt. “She’s got beautiful toes and hits the water without a splash. She’s just very, very flashy and has a lot of built-in style just from her natural talent.”

As for the upcoming SEC Conference Championships Feb. 16-20 at the University of Missouri, Sherritt believes Nied can dive with the best the conference has to offer.

“She’s got to handle the pressure and all that stuff, but my expectation of her is to get in the top eight,” Sherritt said. “It’s definitely doable, so that’s my goal and that’s her goal.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 4:18 PM.