Standing over the edge of the 10 meter platform during one of his afternoon practices, senior Graham Rittiluechai feels a rush of adrenaline and nervousness. As he jumps off the board and tucks himself in for a flip, he only has one goal in mind that he’s been preparing for the past two weeks. He doesn’t care if his coach or school wants it; it’s personal for him.

After being deemed ineligible to compete in varsity last year, Rittiluechai is now on his way to the UIL state meet for diving following a second place in regionals.

Rittiluechai always loved doing stunts. He first started on the playground with his skateboard when he was in third grade, doing front flips, back flips and landing on his face.

Rittiluechai and his friends went to Altitude a lot and ended up meeting teenagers who did crazy stunts that he couldn’t do at that time. He said they set the bar for him and became role models to him. Even though he knew doing flips wouldn’t take him anywhere, he thought it was cool.

When Rittiluechai was in fourth grade, he started painting addresses on curbs around his neighborhood to save up around $2,000 so he could buy a nicer trampoline where he could really focus on his flips. From that point on, he progressed by teaching himself and started posting videos on Instagram.

Rittiluechai said he loved the adrenaline whenever he’s hurling himself up in the air and doing as many flips as he can.

“A lot can go wrong, so when things go right, it just hits way better,” Rittiluechai said.

After getting multiple injures such as breaking his ankle, hurting his back and getting concussions, his parents said he needed to find a sport that can take him somewhere. While they loved that he was putting so much energy into something he loved doing, they wanted him to find a different outlet to put his talent and skills into.

“They were very supportive, but they also were encouraging to take that somewhere,” Rittiluechai said.

Rittiluechai tried out gymnastics for six months but ended up hating it because he didn’t like how he was being coached and just didn’t have fun. When Rittiluechai saw his friends from trampolining start diving, he decided to follow them. While he had some family friends who dove, what inspired him to try the sport was seeing how well diving was going for his friends who used to do flips.

“I respect them a lot so following their footsteps is kind of like it just felt right,” Rittiluechai said.

When Rittiluechai was 13, he started taking lessons at the Dallas Metroplex Diving Club in the Southern Methodist University Robson & Lindley Aquatic Center. He started in the lower group of the club alongside his friend, Pearce diver Michael Evans, and moved up after two days. Rittiluechai was coached by one of the divers and practiced three days a week before eventually practicing five days a week. In the summers, Rittiluechai practiced all day everyday.

Rittiluechai said being able to jump into the water all day felt more natural to him and the environment felt better. He thought he could get better at diving so he stuck with it.

“it’s more similar to what I was doing in my backyard than gymnastics was for me,” Rittiluechai said.

Dallas Metroplex Diving Club coach Parker Hardigree met Rittiluechai four years ago and thought he had really great spatial awareness and was a raw but very talented diver. In August, he became his coach full time and they’ve been polishing his dives and making changes to the basics so he can be a better diver.

Since Rittiluechai came from trampolining and was self-taught, his forms was very unique and not “diver-like.” He had to relearn and rebuild all the basic movements that he had been doing differently from trampolining to fit the form needed for diving. For example, the way you’re supposed to throw your arms when you get into a flip and your tuck shape was completely different to him. When he’s on the trampoline, he doesn’t have to think about looking pretty, but in diving, he has to.

“That’s like kind of where I had to make a lot of adjustments,” Rittiluechai said. “Instead of doing flips just to do them, you have to do flips to look good while you’re doing them.”

Hardigree said Rittiluechai has the ability to do big dives, but he couldn’t make them look effortless. Since the sport is all about aesthetics, Hardigree has gone back and refined his technique to make sure he can make his dives look extra sharp.

While Rittiluechai knew some of the diving basics already since he did flips at pools a couple of times and was able to advance pretty fast, he still spent a year focusing on the basics before he got to do real diving and still works on them to this day. He said he didn’t even consider his basics to be good until last year.

“You can never get good enough at basics and the drills and skills, because they correlate so much with your big dives or really just your diving as a whole that you can never really master it until you’ve won the Olympics,” Rittiluechai said. “But even then you can always get better at the very basics.”

Rittiluechai said his coaches were pretty conservative about what dives he could do at first and wouldn’t let him try moves that would be dangerous. Once Rittiluechai got his technique down to the degree his coaches can manage, he started learning harder dives on the tower and three meter.

Rittiluechai said the feeling of adrenaline came back pretty hard when he started practicing on the taller platforms. He said the ten meter is the scariest event you could do because of the height. There’s more room for error and he has more time in the air to mess up, but he also have the chance to do harder dives.

“It’s the mixture of it being all of my hardest dives, the height and the fear of failure in front of a crowd or the judges or whatever it is,” Rittiluechai said. “All that can mix up and it becomes this weird ball of nervousness and adrenaline.”

Hardigree said during club practices, Rittiluechai is very dedicated and shows up to work hard. He also likes to good off with his friends and has great energy, but whenever he’s on the board, he’s super focused on improving his skills.

Hardigree said he also helps Rittiluechai improve his mindset before meets. He instills in Rittiluechai’s mind that he needs to believe he’s just as good as everyone else and has the ability to outperform all of them.

“The only person standing in his way is him and he needs to keep that in mind,” Hardigree said.

Rittiluechai went to Pearce High School his freshman year where he dove for their team, winning districts and moving onto regionals. While he enjoyed diving there, he didn’t like the school and was willing to sacrifice diving to move to a different school.

Rittiluechai transferred to a charter school his sophomore where they didn’t have a diving team. While he didn’t think the charter school was bad, he had heard so many great things about Richardson High School’s culture compared to Pearce from his older brother and wanted to dive again.

Rittiluechai transferred to RHS in his junior year and joined the Swim and Dive team. Since his older brother attended RHS under a magnet, Rittiluechai was able to transfer without taking a magnet. Swim coach Tori Whitehead knew Rittiluechai since his freshman year because they go to the same club and knew he would be joining the dive team.

UIL suspended Rittiluechai’s eligibility to compete at the varsity level his junior year at RHS. UIL Athletic Director Ray Zepeda said a student is ineligible to compete in varsity athletics for one calendar year if they aren’t in alignment of parent residence rules. For example, if a student is zoned into a school but decides to go to another school without moving then they would not be immediately eligible. He said whether or not the student didn’t play varsity athletics at their previous school does not factor into determining eligibility.

Rittiluechai said he knew he had eligibility issues his first week at RHS since he is zoned into Pearce. He said he felt like he got robbed especially since there was a diver who went to state last year that he knew he could beat, but he also knew he had another year to compete so he wasn’t too upset about it.

Whitehead said it was confusing to hear that he wasn’t eligible because Rittiluechai already had a year where he wasn’t able to compete at his charter school, which means he hasn’t been able to compete in varsity since his freshman year.

Junior diver Addy Stratton said hearing that Rittiluechai couldn’t compete in his junior year definitely sucked, but he was able to push through and be where he is today. She said Rittiluechai should’ve been given the opportunity because he’s really good at diving.

Zepeda said the reason students have to sit out for one year is because UIL’s legislative council believes that their activities are rooted in the communities students live in and centers around education.

“I think that they feel like to a certain degree that you have to integrate into that community, by having a full calendar year of enrollment, so that you’re still kind of again becoming a part of the community that you have moved into,” Zepeda said.

Even though Rittiluechai knew he couldn’t dive on varsity, and his scores wouldn’t count, he still went to meets for fun. His scores only ended up counting at the jv district meet last year where he broke the school record for the six-dive.

“I couldn’t participate in districts or regionals or state and I had to wait till this year to actually be able to participate in those meets, even though there wasn’t as much competition last year, and I could have went to state pretty easily,” Rittiluechai said.

Whitehead submitted an eligibility appeal along with letters from Rittiluechai’s charter school and transcripts because she wanted his family to know they did everything they could to get him to compete. However, UIL denied their appeal.

Whitehead said she was worried that decision would make him unfocused, but she said Rittiluechai still continued to work hard and ended up setting a school record.

While RHS has a dive team, there hasn’t been anyone on it since 2015. Rittiluechai and Stratton, who already knew each other from the club, came to RHS in the same year and decided to revive the team. They practice in the mornings and sometimes with Pearce divers.

Rittiluechai knew his junior year was going to be a year of diving for fun instead of competing and breaking records. Even though he did end up breaking a record, he wasn’t in that mindset and mainly dove at RHS for the extra practice. Instead, he focused on coaching RHS’s dive team which he really enjoyed.

As head coach of the dive team, Rittiluechai said he’s able to improve his own diving by the more he sees, thinks and understands diving. Whenever he’s watching someone and looks at the mistakes they’re making and helping them correct it, it builds strong habits in his mind of what he should or should not be doing.

“Coach people, watch people progress kind of gives me a better understanding of the mechanics and the sport itself,” Rittiluechai said.

Stratton said Rittiluechai coaches her on technique and helps her become a better diver by pushing her to do things even when she doesn’t want to, which ultimately works in her favor.

Stratton said Rittiluechai works hard during practices and always wants to get better. He shows his leadership by showing up to practices and helping her get better at diving.

Whitehead said since she’s a swimmer and doesn’t have experience with coaching divers, she just gives them an opportunity to practice and supervises them while they communicate with each other on what to improve on. She said she’s learning alongside them about how to score dives and judges districts now.

Whitehead said Rittiluechai has always wanted to compete on varsity and even though he’s a silly person and likes to goof off, he’s very consistent with showing up to diving practices and doing his best.

“I’m glad that this is something that he prioritizes, and I hope that he will be able to keep that going in the future,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead said Rittiluechai is a thrill seeker and doesn’t have the same fear response most people have, so he will throw himself into something without thinking. She has seen him smack his face so hard he has a welt on his face and he’ll get up and do it again.

“I think he’s honestly lacking a part of the brain that most people experience fear,” Whitehead said. “I cannot imagine doing any of the things that he’s doing, but he can do it.”

Stratton said Rittiluechai is now more excited about competitions since he knows he’ll get first place no matter what in jv. He enjoys the challenge on varsity and the chance to compete against his friends in other schools.

Rittiluechai competed at districts this year at placed second with a score of 404. He said the meet didn’t go as well as he hoped because he lost his contacts in the middle of his dives and forgot to bring spares, which costed him two of his dives.

On his front two and a half pike, Rittiluechai hit the board as he was coming down from his flip because he didn’t go out far enough into the water, costing him 35 points. On his gainer, he did a balk, where he started the hurdle for his dive but then had to restart because he almost fell off the board costing him around 20 points. Rittiluechai said while his dives weren’t bad, those two brought his score down a lot.

“I probably could have gotten I probably could beat my record again and got like 460, but just know the odds were in my favor that day,” Rittiluechai said.

Rittiluechai said for regionals, he practiced his one meter a lot at his club along with setting his mentality straight. He also isn’t satisfied with his school record of 464 and has a goal to break 500 points. He went into regionals with the mindset of doing his dives to the best of ability and maxing out his scores.

Rittiluechai said he knew he was going to make it to state this year, so he’s really excited. He knows his competition really well from the club practices and believes he can podium. He also said if everything goes right, he could take home the gold.

“Putting that mentality into it is really what’s going to push me closer to that first place,” Rittiluechai said.

Hardigree said the week leading up to state, Rittiluechai came up to him and told him that he really wants to work on his dives and make sure he’s ready. He said in the past, other divers may not do that but Rittiluechai tells him this is important to me and wants to make sure he does well.

Whitehead said now she hopes Rittiluechai makes the most out of this opportunity by doing his best at state and gets the chance to be seen by college scouts.

“I think that once we get through this season we’ll both be grateful for the experience,” Whitehead said. “But it has been stressful.”

Rittiluechai said being able to go to state is the only reason he’s diving at RHS. While there’s a lot of scouts there looking to recruit student athletes, he thinks it’s just an achievement to be able to podium at state.

“I think it’s something worthwhile,” Rittiluechai said. “It’s kind of like why I started diving, for the achievements.”