When Tommy Carpinelli bends the diving board and allows it to propel him skyward, what follows is when the fun really starts for the Lawrence High School senior.
“I really liked the flipping and how unique it was,” he said of what drew him to diving in the first place. “There wasn’t much like it. There’s not really many places you can get the feeling of jumping off the board and flipping and twisting and stuff like that. I just found it so exhilarating.”
Carpinelli has parlayed that exhilaration into a college education, as he will dive for Georgetown University next year. Prior to that, he still has some things to accomplish in high school, as he will attempt to win his second straight NJSIAA state diving championship at Montgomery High School on March 1. Tommy enters the competition with the highest qualifying score of 521 points.
“It was great, it was such an awesome feeling to take that title last year,” he said. “To have a nice title like that felt really good. The work paid off after all those years.”
It has paid off in numerous ways. On Jan. 24, Carpinelli won his second consecutive Mercer County Championship meet title with a score of 291.85. Although Lawrence could not win its third team title in four years, fellow Cardinal Beckham DiPierro (a sophomore) finished second.
“That was great, it was a lot of fun to win it again for my team this year,” Carpinelli said. “Although we did not win as a team, we really put in the work. I feel everyone dove super super well. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be.”
One thing is certain—Carpinelli was meant to be a diver from the very start.
Tommy began his aquatic career as a swimmer for PASDA’s Ben Franklin Swim Club at age 7. His parents encouraged him to try diving, and “at the first practice I fell in love. It has been my favorite thing to do since the day I started.”
For several years, Carpinelli competed, but was mostly doing it for fun. At around age 13 he and his parents decided Tommy should start taking it seriously so he joined the famed Blue Dolphins; an organization that has since become the Jersey Diving Academy. He has remained there ever since, and now competes for JDA and the Lawrence High swimming and diving teams.
It was at JDA that Carpinelli began working with acclaimed coach Eric Blevins; who has had amazing success at the college level and is in his sixth season as head coach of The College of New Jersey.
“You could tell he had a lot of potential at the start,” Blevins said.
That potential was untapped when he arrived, and Carpnelli knew he was at the right place to get polished.
“Having a coach who has coached some really high level divers for tons of years, it was a big step up and a big eye opener to what diving is supposed to look like and what you’re supposed to really be doing,” Carpinelli said. “So there was a lot of progression really quickly. It was a blast. It was really great to have such a high level of coaching.”
Carpinelli had already been with the club for several weeks before Blevins took over five years ago. The coach watched and made mental notes, and around the time Covid hit, they decided to make some changes.
“We broke everything down,” Blevins said. “We changed his approach a little bit. He went from doing a harder dive until we kind of broke it down; so he was doing more of a basic one so he could learn that and go back to the hard one.” He’s just been improving by leaps and bounds over and over and over.”
Actually, leaps and bounds isn’t a bad way to put it. But it was more like hops and skips, which were the adjustments made to elevate Carpinelli’s skills. He said much of the adjustments had to do with his hurdle, which is the diving definition of the walk down the board to approach the dive.
“I essentially changed how I did some hops and did some steps down that board,” Carpinelli explained. “All of that was so I could then jump off the board even higher. I worked on just doing no hop to a small hop to a bigger hop to really get that board moving and get me jumping off higher.”
Lo and behold, what happened on the board translated to success when he hit the water. Carpinelli feels the “break down” is a necessary tool among divers.
“Sometimes to actually progress and get the harder dive you have to completely break down each step of the dive,” he said. “Really breaking down what you need to fix. Then, when you actually go to the harder dive, it’s more perfected.”
The results spoke for just how perfected he got; starting with last year’s MCT title, followed by the state crown and, for the first time in his career, Tommy earned All-America status at the AAU Nationals with a 10th-place finish last summer.
With this year’s MCT already won, Carpinelli is hoping to repeat his double championship by winning states again. But he has become more than just a diver these past two years, returning to his swimming roots and joining the Cardinals swim team in his junior year.
“I decided to join just to help out and have fun,” he said. “A lot of my friends were already on the team and it looked like a blast. I really enjoyed the time I had with swimming.”
He was not just filling up space either. With only 11 boys on the roster this year, coach Ryan Shive was in need of more than just bodies. He needed guys who could contribute. Carpinelli has been that guy.
Swimming predominantly the 200 IM and all three relays, he picked up at least one point (usually more) in all 42 events he swam through the Cardinals 7-6 start. He won a race in the 100 breast, and was in on seven first-place relay finishes. In Lawrence’s 88-82 win over Jackson in the first round of the Central Jersey Group B meet, he made a late push from fifth place to take third in the 200 IM, providing some key points for the Cards.
“He’s been an incredible asset,” Shive said. “He’s not necessarily the fastest on the team, he’s a utility swimmer. I kind of just plug and play, put him anywhere in the lineup to help win the meet. He was one of the reasons we won the Jackson meet. That’s the kind of person he is. If he has to, he’ll do it.
“I don’t know how much anyone can understand how important he is. He’s not going out and getting firsts and seconds, but to have someone who can swim anywhere and get that third or fourth place consistently, especially in tough events, is big.”
While it’s nice of Tommy to lend his skills to the swimmers, he is a diver first and foremost. And he did not become good by accident.
“He works so hard,” Blevins said. “He was the one that made himself into what he is. I’ve had kids that have had a lot of potential that just kind of rode on it. You could tell he wanted it. He really, really worked for it.”
The result of that work is a diver who is enjoyable to watch.
“He’s so clean with all of his entries,” Blevins continued. “Even when he’s off, he looks like he’s on, pretty much. He’s been bumping up on DD (degree of difficulty). He’s not really afraid to try a lot of the harder stuff. Even if he thinks he can’t do it, he’s willing to do the learning curve. He learns from everything, takes his past experiences and improves on them.”
Carpinelli feels the key to being a good diver is to have confidence and enjoy what you’re doing. He also takes well to coaching tips; and figures that even if a new dive is intimidating, he won’t shy away from it because it’s the only way to progress. And then of course, there is the intense focus that is necessary on the board.
“Every diver is different but I definitely like to really visualize what you need to do,” he said. “I honestly feel that can help a lot. It helps you get in the zone and know what you need to do. So there’s certainly a great deal of focus when you’re standing up there.”
Carpinelli’s focus on his future will take him to Washington D.C., as he will dive for a quality Hoyas program next year.
“At summer nationals, I got an offer from Georgetown and almost immediately I knew I wanted to take it,” he said. “Georgetown was high on my list, it’s a beautiful school, great academics, and the dive team, from what I heard from the kids and the coaches, is amazing. It gave me such a great vibe. The team culture, team bonding was such a major draw for me.”
In other words, the guy who loves flipping through the air in his dives; has his feet on solid ground when it comes to life.
“I’m so excited,” he said. “I could not be happier.”
Lawrence High School diver Tommy Carpinelli (left) with teammate Beckham DiPierro, shows off the results of a recent competition in which he won a gold medal. (Photo by Joe Costello.),
