Gretchen Mossburg originally wasn’t a diver, even with family ties in swimming, but after deciding that she was done with gymnastics at 15 years old, diving became her primary sport. 

Mossburg followed in her mom and uncle’s footsteps as they both were swimmers. Her mom swam through highschool and her uncle swam at the division two level.

“My parents found out that at a young age I was athletically skilled and they wanted me to use that skill to go to college and use it to get a scholarship,” Mossburg said.

One of her gymnastics coaches actually suggested that she start diving because one of the girls on the gymnastics team left and started diving. 

Mossburg has had a love-hate relationship with diving. In high school, she admits that she lost her passion for the sport in high school. 

“There’s times where I definitely have gotten burned out,” she said. “Definitely, I will say I was really against going into a college sport in high school until junior year. That was also when my passion came back for doing a sport and I realized I did want to go for a college sport.”

Mossburg is a 2D studio art major and she says that it has helped her form time management skills while juggling being a student and a division one athlete.

Being originally from Maryland, Mossburg wanted to stay in-state to go to college. After doing her research, she realized a lot of the colleges around her really didn’t have the things she was looking for. 

When she looked at Georgia Southern, she saw that the school did not offer an illustration major, but a more broad spectrum of majors that she was interested in.

In 2018, she jumped to the fourth-best spot on the all-time Georgia Southern performance list after getting a score of 280.25 in the 1 meter event at the 2018 CCSA Championships.

“I want to say it does make me feel proud that I do leave back some sort of legacy, especially being like a senior now,” Mossburg said. “When it comes to diving, I’ve never really paid attention to the scores and the scores did matter to me but as soon as that meet finished that meet was in the past.”

Diving Coach Collin Vest has not been at GS for Mossburg’s entire tenure as an Eagle, but she says that he has helped her in many ways since his time as her coach. 

“He definitely had a different coaching style than what I’ve had in other diving situations,” she said. “In the beginning Collin and I butt heads a lot in the beginning the first year he was here. But over time I started to open up my mind and be more open minded to his coaching style.” 

Mossburg believes that the team genuinely feels like a family and since she’s the oldest, the other girls are all like little sisters to her. 

If she could go back in time, she would tell her freshman self to just relax and embrace the journey of being a collegiate simmer.

“You’re going to get through this kid,” she said. “You’ll be okay. It’s gonna go by so fast. Just go for the ride and see where it takes you.”

Elijah Jackson, The George-Anne Sports Editor, gasports@georgiasouthern.edu