Columbus North’s Dagan Kleffman performs a dive Jan. 20 in the Chuck Newell Natatorium at Columbus North High School. Tommy Walker/For The Republic
Columbus North junior Dagan Kleffman will be making his first appearance in the Boys Swimming and Diving State Finals Saturday.
Kleffman and 31 other divers will compete beginning with the diving prelims at 9 a.m. Saturday at the IU Natatorium in Indianapolis. The finals will take place within the swimming consolations and finals, which begin at 1 p.m. Saturday.
“Honestly, I don’t know much of what to expect, but I know it’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be a good meet,” Kleffman said. “I know there’s going to be a lot of good divers there. At least there will be a lot of people I could look up to there.”
Dagan Kleffman
Kleffman clinched his spot in the state finals by finishing fifth in Tuesday’s Jasper Regional with a personal-best 11-dive score of 405.10.
“There’s always more. You can always dive better,” Kleffman said. “There’s never going to be a perfect meet, but I definitely did really well, especially PR’ing by a few points. I was able to do some of my dives I was more iffy on really good, and that gave me a good confidence boost. Hopefully, I can go into state and score even higher then.”
Ben Ostrinsky is wrapping up his second season as the diving coach at North, along with the Donner Dive Club. He is a Maryland native that started with diving in 2011 got into coaching in 2017 when he was 15 years old.
Ostrinsky is happy with Kleffman’s progress the past couple years.
“He’s an incredible athlete,” Ostrinsky said. “Over the last two seasons that I’ve coached him, he’s shown incredible drive, so much improvement in his skill. He’s very coachable, and it’s really shown in his scores. Last year at regional, he missed out on qualifying for state, and this year, I almost knew he was going to be a lock before he did his first dive. It was a question of what place he was going to finish in that qualification. He’s improved so much, and he’s such a great diver and I’m very impressed with how much he has progressed and improved and performed this season.”
Kleffman has come a long way since he began diving his freshman year. He will look for a good score Saturday.
“Regardless with how it’s going to go, I’m going to try and soak it up and definitely try to leave with a good performance, but always have something I can reflect on, so that’s the way I’m going in with the mindset,” Kleffman said.
