New coach dives into UTRGV    

_{UTRGV Diving coach Jennifer Mangum COURTESY PHOTO}

Wednesday, head swimming and diving coach Betsy Graham announced the hiring of diving coach Jennifer Mangum for the inaugural season of the program, according to a UTRGV Athletics news release.

“I am very excited to be starting this team at UTRGV,” Mangum is quoted as saying in the news release. “I am grateful to Coach Graham and to director of athletics Chasse Conque and … I am excited to be part of a thriving University and community.”

Graham told The Rider in a phone interview today that Mangum “brings expertise to all coaching levels.”

“I have fun watching her coach,” Graham said. “I watched how she’s taken some pretty green divers and gotten them to a national level.”

Starting in 2017, Mangum served as head diving coach at the University of Texas Permian Basin, where she led the program to two First Team NCAA Division II All-Americans and eight Honorable Mention All-Americans. 

She was a three-time NCAA Zone qualifier in the 1- and 3-meter dives during her time competing collegiately from 1983-86 at Texas Tech, where she first met Graham as a teammate. 

Mangum, who was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2014, has won 15 Masters World Championships and over 125 national championships. In 2023, she won a world championship in the 1-meter, 3-meter and platform dives.

 She served as an award-winning diving coach for Midland High and Legacy High School for 24 years before working at UTPB, collecting recognitions such as the “2017 State 6A Boys Coach of the Meet, 2016 State 6A Coach of the Year and the 2014 State Girls 6A Coach of the Year,” according to the news release.

The Texas Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association awarded her in 2018 with the Craig Nolder Diving Lifetime Award, and in 2021, she was named the New South Intercollegiate Conference Diving Coach of the Year.

“I encouraged her to apply for the position because I know what expertise she has … and she just was the top candidate out of everybody that applied,” Graham said. “She will continue to coach diving and I will coach swimming.

“When it comes to, you know, getting the team ready to go, providing the things they will need, we will work together on all of that.”

The team’s first competition is scheduled to take place in October. Graham said practice will begin right after Labor Day weekend to give the team a chance to settle into the new semester.