Brandon Makinson, one of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s best divers, has been working on the technical side of his sport since he was an 8-year-old at summer camp. He knows, too, that there’s a bit of art to it all—the beauty of diving is in its motion, its twists and turns of the body that lead to the perfect entry.
What judges see as perfect “comes and goes in waves,” said Makinson, a senior who was an All-ACC diver last season and won the ACC Diver of the Week honor three times in 2012. “Recently, they’ve changed the degree of difficulty, where they want more flips. They want to get back to how diving started, where you had the front dive straights and lots of easy technical dives but more artistic in appearance. A lot of Olympic-level divers will take ballet and yoga to get in touch with a more artistic level of it.”
That extra effort to build beyond his technical base has vaulted Makinson into the upper echelon of the ACC and earned him the opportunity to compete for a spot on the Olympic team for his native Canada. It helped make him Georgia Tech’s all-time record holder in both the 1-meter dive (375.25 points) and 3-meter dive (408.1).
What started as casual swimming during summer break as a child has blossomed into a skill that’s allowed Makinson to pursue his interest in aerospace engineering in one of the best such programs in the country. He makes the most of his time out of the tank, qualifying for the ACC All-Academic Team and being named to the ACC Academic Honor Roll in each of his first three years at Georgia Tech.
Makinson shows that passion and dedication can turn diving—a nontraditional sport that doesn’t earn the same attention as football, baseball, basketball and even swimming—into something big.
“I would relate it to any other sport that people get into,” Makinson said. “Once you like it and commit to it … once you put your mind to it, there’s nothing that’s going to hold you back. It takes the same amount of commitment that any of those sports did.”
Maybe even more commitment, at times, given how individual the sport is. Coaches can give divers tips and help them refine their craft, but diving is very much about repetition and competing against yourself.
Makinson knows this well. Every time he ascends the diving platform, he’s up there alone.
Diving is also one of the more subjective sports, which Makinson admits can cause a certain amount of frustration. Knowing what the judges are looking for in each dive can make a difference in the score a diver gets, and all great scores aren’t equal.
But after more than a dozen years of work, Makinson says he knows sooner than spectators or even the judges when he’s nailed his dive.
“I can almost tell how dives are going to go as I leave the board,” Makinson said. “How I set up, my balance, my ride on the board sets it all up. As soon as I hit the water, I can say ‘That was good; I should get some good scores for that.’”
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