By Sarah Tone, Communications Coordinator
It was thanks to a free diving camp in Cali, Colombia that Juan Campuzano discovered the world of diving at the age of 8. Juan did not know how to swim or dive at the time, but he figured out how to do both after his first dive. While at the time, this camp was a way for him and his thirty (!!) cousins to pass the time, Juan couldn’t have imagined that coaching this sport would eventually become his career.
Campuzano started coaching amateur divers when he was 17, and went on to coach for 10 more years, progressing through to high-performance coaching with the junior and senior national team divers in Colombia. He moved to Winnipeg in the mid-2000s, after meeting fellow coach Dallas Ludwick at an event in Montreal, and joined the Revolution Diving Club in 2016.
“Diving is similar in Canada and Columbia, but the biggest difference is in Columbia, it’s an outdoor sport and in Canada it’s mainly an indoor sport which totally changes the way you coach.”
Campuzano appreciates the opportunity to coach the Canada Games team, and to mentor and support other club coaches. He brings the ability to teach developing coaches a large diversity of creative drills and exercises for the development of young divers on the high-performance pathway. Many of his athletes have qualified for the 2019 Western Canada Summer Games, the 2019 Diving Canada Elite Nationals, the 2019 Diving Canada Development Nationals, and now here, at the 2022 Canada Summer Games.
His holistic approach to coaching the whole athlete is what helped him earn the 2022 Manitoba Hydro Janet Arnott Memorial Coaching Award (Sport Manitoba).
When asked if he gets scared of heights after years of practice on a 10m diving board, he says he’s maintained his confidence through the years.
“If I was to go up a 20-30m building and look down, I would feel [nervous]. I don’t feel those nerves on a platform anymore.”
