Maynard Dives Into College

Melissa Maynard will join the Missouri State University swimming and diving team next year.
Melissa Maynard will join the Missouri State University swimming and diving team next year.

Melissa Maynard participated in competitive gymnastics for 11 years, until the physical wear and tear forced her to give it up. But a second chance will have her spinning and tumbling through college in a different sport, as a member of the swimming and diving team at Missouri State University. Maynard will join a college program just a little over a year after she took up the sport.

“I’d always had some interest in (diving), and my mom had done it, and I always thought it was cool. It’s a lot less impact. I just wanted to try it so I thought why not just give it a shot, just for fun?” Maynard says. “My friend gave me the number of the diving coach for Drury University, and he got me in contact with my first diving coach, Sam Palmer, who used to dive for Drury, and he gave private lessons. So I had private lessons with him at Drury twice a week, just to get started.”

Those lessons “for fun” quickly turned into something more, once Palmer saw Maynard’s potential.

“I wasn’t really (thinking scholarship) at first. I just wanted to give it a try and see what it was like,” Maynard says. “I caught on really fast, and Sam told me I probably did have the potential to dive in college, and so I decided to take it a little more seriously, and try to start diving more and just see where I could go with it.”

Republic doesn’t have its own swimming and diving team, but Maynard was still a Lady Tiger as a member of the soccer program. Though the two sports are very different, she did take some lessons away from her time with her soccer teammates and coaches Mike Hines and David Ashby.

“The importance of a team and…hard work, because the soccer team is a very close-knit group, and you spend a lot of time with each other,” she says. “Your attitude can influence the attitude of your teammates, so that’s something I really will take from soccer and my coaches.”

Maynard says her pursuit of excellence in the pool, on the field, and in the classroom, has been taught to her from an early age.

“Starting sports at such a young age, and with your coaches influencing you, you kind of grow up with that sense that ‘this is what needs to be done, and this is how I’m going to reach it,’” she says. “I’ve always had the mindset of setting high goals and just working hard to reach those goals. In the classroom too, I’ve always taken pride in my grades, and getting straight As. It’s just kind of second nature to me, I guess.”

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