Saskatoon Diving Club
Organization (2025)
Diving
Steve and Mary Carroll are doing a world of good.
Steve is from Newfoundland. He has been the head coach of the Saskatoon Diving Club for 18 years. His wife Mary is from Thunder Bay. She started out coaching the Saskatoon club’s younger divers. She now trains its high and mighty.
At the 2024 Olympics, Mary was on the deck in Paris as a national team coach when Margo Erlam of the Saskatoon club competed in women’s springboard. Steve was in the stands and Mary poolside when Rylan Wiens of the Saskatoon club won bronze in men’s synchro platform.
Kash Tarasoff and Presley Deck are the next wave. They’ve both been to world juniors.
Among the athletes from the club who have gone to college in the States on a scholarship are R.J. Hesselberg, Bjorn Markentin, Kendra Melynchuk, Ainsley Oliver and the Spilchak’s, Casey and Jamie.
The club is family. Twin sisters Ali and Lauren Cey and their older brother Jonah are divers. Before the Carrolls, the club’s head coach was Lorn Wionzek. Lorn’s daughter Jocelynne was a diver with the club and then a coach. Lorn’s daughter Alyssa and son Aaron were divers.
The club has history. Springboard diver Lawrence ‘Curly’ Woodhead cleaned up in the Dirty 30s. Audrey Turner was a three-time Canadian champion in the ’40s. Kathy (Rollo) Seaman has been to 10 Olympics, from competing in platform in 1972 to being a technical delegate in 2021. Dave Elder competed in three Canada Games. Jeff Bacon went to the Commonwealth Games. Karl Fix and Angela Borthwick were the top Canadians in tower at the World University Games. Sam Valentine went to world juniors.
The club talks and listens. Wiens and Erlam spoke to students at a school about their Olympic journey. Wiens gave presentations at Gym Sask awards night and to the Prairie Lily Curling League at the Nutana Club.
The club is quality, from teaching the basics in its youth program to ripping the entry at nationals.
“We have annual awards and one of my favourites is the Jill Brewer Award,” said Steve Carroll of an award that’s named after the woman who coached the Saskatoon Diving Club in the 1980s. “It’s awarded to the coach in our program that mentored and developed other upcoming coaches the best.”