Following Friday's meet in Athens, Ga., the Auburn diving team will break from its swimming counterpart this weekend to compete at the Georgia Tech Diving Invitational Friday through Saturday in Atlanta.
"Every time you have an opportunity to step up and compete, you have an opportunity to get better," said diving coach Jeff Shaffer. "Sometimes you get better by maybe performing a dive not necessarily as well as you want to, and you analyze where your errors were and you work on correcting them.
Along with Auburn, Georgia Tech will host competitors Clemson, Emory, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida Atlantic, Florida, Florida State, Miami and Virginia Tech.
The invitational will serve as an opportunity to see what other teams have in store for future competitions.
"We use the fall to break down skills and start to put together our competitive list," Shaffer said. "The Georgia Tech meet gives us an opportunity to be in a championship format just like we will go through at the SECs, the NCAA zone meet and the NCAA championships where they have to do well enough in the preliminaries to advance to the finals."
Furthermore, the meet will prove a useful tool in evaluating Auburn's current ability and untapped potential.
"Diving is a very difficult sport. I'm a very patient person in developing our athletes, and they understand that sometimes you can't get better without making mistakes. So, we analyze the mistakes, break down the skills and work on the individual parts of the skill that are going to make the whole better."
The team spends hours each day practicing the dives and platform routines. They are confident they will impress at the invitational.
"I think we have a really good chance," said senior diver Vennie Dantin. "These meets that we've had have built up to be great, and everyone's kind of gotten in their groove.
The invitational will be the diving team's first platform meet this season.
"There will definitely be some good competition," said sophomore diver John Santeui. "There will be 40-plus divers in each event. It'll be good to be on platform for the first time competing this year.
"I'm hoping that this season can be as good as last year and better."
The divers will rejoin the swimming team Dec. 2-4 when they compete together at the Georgia Invitational in Athens.
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