Deep Dive with Duncan Lester

With his senior season on the horizon, diver Duncan Lester is coming off of his most impressive year to date as a Minnesota Gopher. With numerous 'A' final appearances and top five finishes from his junior campaign, what was arguably the Boulder, Colo. native's most impressive performance came during the 2019-20 NCAA Zone D Championships, where Lester earned his first NCAA qualification of his career with an eighth place finish in the one-meter (12 dives | 606.40).

This year, Lester looks to build on his excellence from last, and Gopher Sports caught up with him to discuss.

GopherSports: What have you been doing to keep busy the past few months?
Lester: "After the season ended, I finished out the semester in Minnesota, and came back to Colorado around early May. I took a road trip out to Lake Tahoe in Northern California where I did some cliff jumping with friends, which was a really good time, and since then, I've basically been hanging out in Colorado. I started working, and have done a couple camping trips, but that's been it for the most part."

GS: What spurred your trip to Lake Tahoe?
Lester: "It was actually a pretty last minute trip, but basically I had some friends out there who knew a bunch of cliff jumping spots. I had dipped my toe in that area a little bit, but hadn't really done a lot of cliff jumping quite yet, so it was just kind of a cool opportunity to be able to dive even though the pools were closed down. Our previous GA was actually a Red Bull cliff diver, so she kind of got me into it a little bit more because the spots they go to on their Red Bull tour are absolutely insane."

GS: How would you assess your 2019-20 season and what are your biggest takeaways?
Lester: "There were definitely some sweet accomplishments that came out of last season. The NCAA qual was probably the biggest one. I think my biggest takeaway was just keeping my eyes on the prize and keeping my goals in mind throughout the challenges I may have faced, the biggest of which for me was dealing with a shoulder and back injury intermittently throughout the season. Being able to manage those, as well as keep up training made it so that come championship season, I still felt prepared."

GS: Take us through your emotions at the NCAA Zones after earning your first ever NCAA bid.
Lester: "The first event of Zones was three-meter which I was able to final in and I was pretty psyched on that. Then, coming into one-meter, it was all about maintaining that positive mindset and consistency. Truthfully, it wasn't totally expected, but I knew there was a possibility. Basically, towards the end of the one-meter final, I would just sit in the bathroom and try and not hear any of the scores or anything else going on, to just totally separate myself from all the craziness and nervousness that was going on out on the pool deck. I was just really pleased with the result, and I know my family was pretty happy with it too."

GS: Take us through your pre-dive routine.
Lester: "I typically just try to move away and get to a place where there's not a lot of distractions, and then listen to some music and read a book. Throughout the year, I'll typically just bring a textbook. Something that's so boring, I have to be thinking about the book in order to move my mind off diving. In a really long meet, like Big Tens or Zones where you could be competing for possibly four hours straight, I think you need to give yourself a break, and then once you're coming up in the order, then you can get back into focus and the right mindset."

GS: With Sarah Bacon coming back this year, how do you expect your role to shift compared to last season?
Lester: "Obviously, Sarah is a huge asset to the team. When I was an underclassman, having her on the team was definitely inspiring, having someone to look up to in two people who have been in the sport for so long. She was still practicing with us through the past year, but it's definitely different when they're not at meets competing with you. With them coming in as rising seniors with me, it'll just be really great to have other seniors helping lead by example to really show the underclassman the way. Last year, we had a couple transfers as well as several freshmen coming in. I think there were five new divers on the team, which for some D1 programs could be their whole team, so it was a total adjustment in that sense. Jeremy Moser and I, who had been roommates for the past year definitely had a lot of conversations about how to restructure the team and continue to foster the team culture with such a big change. And then additionally, Jeremy would occasionally be gone for job interviews, and in that case I'd find myself stepping up. So, I look forward to taking an even bigger leadership role in the coming year."

GS: Have you talked with any of the incoming freshman divers yet? What was your first impression?
Lester: "Funny enough, they're all coming from the Minnesota Diving Academy, which is basically our local club, and so I've coached all of them occasionally over the past year. I've gotten to know them a little bit, and I look forward to getting to know them better as teammates. I think they're going to be fun to have on the team. I've known Josiah Fick for about two years, and I'd say my initial impression is that he's super powerful. I think that's really important to come into college showing potential, and then when you have a good coach like Wenbo Chen, you can kind of refine the technique, and get a more polished technique in dives."

GS: Who is a teammate that really impressed you this past season?
Lester: "My friend and teammate Ryan Phillip. He was dealing with a fairly serious back injury for most of the year, and through that he was really able to excel in his diving. That always impresses me, when you have to push through pain, possibly have to do rehab before practice, and then are still able to complete some pretty difficult workouts."

GS: Is there someone you'd tab as the next "breakout" Gopher?
Lester: "I do think Ryan is going to excel, but for the purpose of changing it up, I'll say Jae Sarkis. She was really fun to watch this past year. She transferred in, and having access to more resources and this big facility, she was able to learn a lot of big dives, and also qualify for NCAAs at the very end of the year. I think it'll just be continued success this coming year for her."

GS: What comes after school for you?
Lester: "Truthfully, I don't know where I'll fall right now. I'm a strategic communications major and a fashion studies minor, so this summer I've been pursuing fashion through different online forums and blogging. And then additionally, I have an internship at the end of this summer with a small advertising in Boulder. Definitely just looking for something where I could have some crossover in both of those fields. A dream position would likely be just managing social media and marketing for an independent fashion designer."

GS: When did you start diving, and what did your path to a D1 program look like?
Lester: "For the most part, if you were to ask other divers, they start in gymnastics, but I actually didn't start there. Basically, I had a trampoline and was starting to do bigger and bigger tricks on there until ultimately my mom was convinced I was going to hurt myself, so she found a local pool with diving lessons that I could do. My main thing was actually wrestling at the time, and as I got more serious in diving, I was also pretty serious with wrestling. I did each of those sports half of the year up until I was a junior in high school. Then, it became clear that in order to do either one in college, I was going to have to commit year round, so that's when I chose to dive year round. It was pretty good timing because right around junior year is when you start taking recruiting trips and all of that, which definitely changed the course of what schools I was looking at."

GS: What is your favorite part of being a Gopher?
Lester: "I think one of my favorite parts of being a Gopher is that, because we're such a huge school, you have access to so many things. As a student-athlete, you get to go to any sporting event for free, which has been a huge asset. I really enjoyed going to all of the volleyball and football games, and as I've mentioned, wrestling matches are super entertaining for me as well. The sports have been awesome to watch. Additionally, having an athletes village with a bomb dining hall. We have massages and sport psychology, it's just like there's no limit to what you can check out at Minnesota, which has been really fun."

GS: Outside of diving, what are your passions?
Lester: "Cliff jumping has been fun as of recent, but I hadn't really explored that until earlier this summer. Coming from Boulder, I've always been big into hiking. I actually just hiked a 14er last week, which is basically a 14,000 foot summit up a mountain, so different stuff like that. Living in Minneapolis has separated me a little bit from nature and the mountains, but it's cool to experience a completely different location and setting. There's just a different vibe here from Colorado, which I love. The other thing is, I've become a fashion studies minor as I mentioned. I didn't really know I had this interest or passion coming into college at all, so being able to take classes that aren't purely required or being able to branch out from just your minor is really something I think everyone wants from college. To discover something they're interested in that isn't just offered through an average high school curriculum."

GS: The 2019-20 season was filled with adversity. How did you see the team's strength shine through while dealing with that?
Lester: "I think every season has its fair share of adversity, and COVID-19 was really only affecting the really late part of our season, so for the most part it was fairly typical stuff like injuries. Nearly every single person on the dive team, and the swim team I assume as well, had to face some kind of injury, so there's definitely its fair share of adversity in every season. I think that Jeremy was really able to have a positive impact on the team. He was coming back from a shoulder surgery, but was still able to just maintain the most positive attitude, and he was always a resource that our underclassmen could come to. I think as well, when everyone was kind of hitting this second-part-of-the-season wall where you feel tired and you've got even more school work, people were just focussed on their goals. Seeing people come in and work really hard, sweating at seven a.m. on a Saturday morning or even earlier for swimmers, that just made everyone band together and work even harder. The team unity that I saw in the second half of the season I think helped everyone perform at their best during championship season."

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Players Mentioned

Josiah Fick

Duncan Lester

Jeremy Moser

Ryan Phillip