Vol. 19, No. 13

Dec. 2, 1999

Father and daughter make
aquatics a winning combination

Like father, like daughter-John Schuster, diving coach, and daughter, Megan, a diver on the UD swimming team, are a winning combination in and out of the water. An All-American diver on the 1- and 3-meter boards, John learned to dive at a country club in the Chicago suburbs where he grew up and started coaching there during his sophomore year in high school. He continued diving while at Clarion University. After graduation, he became a diving coach at Eastern Illinois University where received his master's degree in physical education, coming to UD in 1984. Megan, a junior majoring in biology, is right at home in the Harry Rawstrom Natatorium at the Carpenter Sports Building, where her father started to teach her diving when she was 5 years old. As a Newark High School diver, she was ranked third in the state her junior and senior years. The duo also teaches scuba diving to UD students with Megan as her father's assistant instructor. They have taken students to Key West and Fort Lauderdale, as well as locations in Pennsylvania, on scuba diving expeditions. The other children in the family are athletes, but not aquatically minded, John said. His son plays football for Newark High School, and his 11-year-old daughter prefers basketball. The women's swimming team includes two other divers, Tanya Mainville and Megan Rogers, and the men's swimming team has four divers-Brian Aston, Levar Larks, Adam Keim and David Troskey. At meets, each diver must perform one required dive and then select a dive from each of five different categories-forward, backward, reverse, inward and twisting. The dives are judged on their varying degrees of difficulty. The season, which will end in March, is just getting under way for the men's and women's swimming teams, which compete in the America East conference. -Sue Moncure