Ten years ago, an 11-year-old girl in Thunder Bay, Ontario, got it into her head that she wanted to become a diver.

While taking swimming lessons at the local pool, Hillary Nichols would spend her time watching the pool’s diving club have its practice — it only took so long before Nichols knew she wanted to dive.

“I went home and told my dad, and I was like, ‘I’m going to start diving,'” Nichols said.

Her dad called the pool and learned the diving club would be holding tryouts the following week. Although she had no background in diving, Nichols considered herself ready because she did have experience in other sports — including gymnastics. Nichols made the team and was on her way to an athletic career in diving.

After an impressive sophomore season at Iowa State, Nichols is continuing her dream of diving — even with an inflamed left shoulder and sprained right ankle. It’s not getting in her way though; Nichols has kept competing, but is practicing less.

Without a diving team at her high school, Nichols was forced to continue diving at the local pool. Furthermore, unless a diver was good enough for the national team, the opportunity to dive at a Canadian university as a scholarship athlete was rare. But she didn’t want to stop diving — leaving an important decision in her hands.

Nichols could stay close to home and go to school while continuing to dive at the local pool, or she could do what many divers before her had done — travel to the United States to dive at an American university and receive a scholarship.

Nichols began investigating American universities in the Midwest. She spent her senior year of high school, with the help of her coach, contacting schools. Of the five or six universities interested in signing Nichols to its diving team, she visited four — Iowa State being one of them.

“I pretty much knew that I would like to have her here at ISU,” said diving coach Jeff Warrick. “We talked a lot on the phone as much as the NCAA would allow and we flew her in for an official visit to see the campus and meet the team.”

Nichols said her trip to Iowa State was her last recruiting trip, and she immediately liked the team and Warrick.

“When I was on my recruiting trip here, I had a feeling I would end up coming here,” she said.

Warrick said when he met Nichols, he thought she was goal-oriented and wanted to excel.

“I liked her as a person. She had good character, looked like a nice person to work with, and a good person to coach,” he said. “I knew she was someone who could really help our team.”

Warrick said he thought Nichols had a lot of experience and confidence. He said he knew she would be solid on platform diving, but she has exceeded his expectations by excelling at it.

Nichols said her parents were supportive of her attending Iowa State.

“They were thrilled about this,” she said. “They wanted me to get away and get this opportunity. Go to school, dive, do something I’ve been doing for most of my life.”

Although home is an 11-hour drive away, Nichols said she thinks Iowa State is close enough to home. She sees her parents during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and her parents sometimes visit Ames — partly because they like the area.

During her first year as a diver at Iowa State, Nichols said it took some readjusting, since things in the United States were different from the Canadian ways.

After an impressive sophomore season, including competing in the 2004 NCAA Zone D Diving Championships, Nichols said her biggest goal this season is to make the NCAA championships, a feat she narrowly missed last year.