Diving Into It: How Senior Peter Stechschulte started diving in middle school and is now one of the only competitive year round divers in the Kansas City area

Between then-eighth grader Peter Stechschulte’s sets of exhausting 100-meter breaststroke and freestyle warm-ups for swim team in the 98 degree sun, he couldn’t help but notice kids doing backflips off the diving board. 

That summer, he begged his mom to join the dive team. For him, it was an exhilarating and relaxing sport. Now, he’s a senior with multiple Division I college diving offers.

Peter, one of the only competitive year-round-divers in the Kansas City area, is thankful he found the sport when he did and is hoping that the sport can grow to more kids in the area.

“Being at a pool all throughout the summer I feel like you’re going off the diving boards regularly regardless of if you’re on the dive team or not,” Peter said. “Once I hopped on the team my skill progressed really quickly.”

Peter has been racking up wins since last year at  dive states, where Peter placed third last winter. This past summer, he competed in one national competition and was competing against the best divers in the country. On top of that, he was still practicing five times a week.

From eighth grade to his freshman year, his diving skills only improved. His individual scores from judges jumped three points and his overall scores increased 40 points. When he started diving during the school year in sophomore year he won state.

At one of his summer practices a week before Dive Champs — the biggest diving competition between country clubs in the Kansas City area, he met his current personal and club coach Ford Mcliney. Ford is a dive coach at Rockhurst University and won the SEC Championships in 2014 at Texas A&M. 

After Ford’s younger cousin, Peter’s coach at Milburn, asked him to help with the dive team he instantly saw Peter was a special athlete.

“I met Peter and instantly was like ‘Oh this kid’s got some serious moves,’” Ford said. “He could rip, he’s strong and you can clearly tell he’s an athlete, he had that diver body.”

Peter and Ford’s relationship would grow closer as Ford started going to more practices and meets while Peter asked him questions about how to be a better diver with his form and confidence.

“During Dive Champs, he talked me through every one of my dives,” Peter said. “He told me simple things that really helped, like doing five jumping jacks before my dive to help calm my nerves.”

Peter was scoring eights and nines out of 10 consistently at meets that he was not expected to win in. In fact, he was the youngest in his age group at most of the summer meets he competed in according to Ford.

Going into his junior year, Peter knew that he wanted to do national competitions with a club team and Ford. However, there were no previous club teams in the KC area and not many indoor pools in the area for practice. 

This led Peter’s dad, Dr. Stephen Stechschulte and a close family friend Andrew Flower — a former diver at KU — to create their own club team called the “AF-MB dive club” for Peter and other divers to compete year round.

“When I was growing up in Michigan you could pay 50 cents for an hour at my high school to practice anytime you wanted,” Andrew said. “The whole goal with creating this club team is so that Peter and other kids have an ability to stay on the board during the offseason and stay in touch with the sport.”

Now that Peter has been diving with AF-MB for over a year he’s been able to experience Junior Nationals through USA Diving, which is against the the top high schoolers in the country and more recently Senior Nationals in Knoxville, Tennessee against the most decorated divers from high school to post-college.

“When I was going to the pool for practice in Knoxville, I hopped in the elevator and I was like, ‘I’m in the elevator with David Boudia who is an olympic gold medalist and one of the best divers ever, holy crap,’” Peter said.

Peter has also been getting actively recruited by colleges, now that he has been diving year round. These offers range from small D3 schools to major D1 universities. But, he’s still undecided if he wants to dive in college.

“Diving is a super fun sport and I love doing it, I just don’t know if it’s something I can be doing 24/7 for a whole year,” Peter said. “I know I have options in regards to what I’ll do next, I’m just not fully set yet.”