How 2 former gymnasts turned divers reached the state championships for SLO High School

Justin Dolezal stepped up to the diving board with his back facing the water.

Then, he jumped off the 1-meter-high platform into a somersault while pirouetting 720 degrees before flattening out his body as he hit the surface.

As Dolezal climbed out of the pool, fellow diver Julia Bellardo took her turn on the board.

As she launched into the air, Bellardo tucked her shins toward her face and flipped in the air one-and-a-half times. At the peak of her jump, she released her legs for a perfect dive.

“They both know how to spin and twist like crazy,” said Head Coach Jerry Damron while watching a practice last week.

The two San Luis Obispo High School divers are coming off a successful season that saw each take their league title.

Dolezal secured first place in league and in the CIF Central Section with scores of 481.30 and 480.70 respectively.

Bellardo won the top spot for the girls in league with a first-place finish of 364.75 and third place in CIF with a score of 287.50.

Despite that success, neither Bellardo nor Dolezal grew up as divers.

Instead, they participated in competitive gymnastics, a background that that makes the flipping and twisting while mid-dive easy.

How Bellardo found success in first year of dive

Bellardo only started diving this season, and she said the biggest adjustment was trusting the board.

“There’s a long time I was afraid that I was going to hit it every single time (I dove),” she said.

Because of Bellardo’s background in gymnastics, she feels comfortable contorting her body mid-air to perform dives like the front one-and-a-half pike.

However, her mental approach to diving is what separates Bellardo, who is headed to Oxford to study computer science.

“Every time I get on the board, I’m always go, go, go,” she said. “I don’t pause and stand in the shower for a long time or sit in the hot tub. I want to keep getting better.”

Her season didn’t start out with immediate success. In fact, Bellardo described her first meet as “really bad.”

But she continued to steadily improve and ultimately made it to state with her hard work.

Bellardo’s fearless nature also stood out to Damron.

“Every time I ask her to do harder and harder stuff, she just never backs down,” he said.

How Justin Dolezal went from the trampoline to the diving board

Dolezal started diving at the beginning of high school when the dive coach at the time gave him a call to give the sport a try.

Diving was uncomfortable for him at first, but Dolezal said he became addicted.

“All of a sudden you didn’t know you were able to do something and then you do it, and then it’s like, ‘Can I do it again?’“ he said.

Similar to Bellardo, Dolezal could flip effortlessly in the air because of gymnastics. He grew up jumping trampoline, which made the flips feel “super natural.”

What he wasn’t prepared for were the frigid mornings.

“It gets cold when you’re on the board, and it’s 40 degrees out,” Dolezal said. “Your body doesn’t want to be there. Good old-fashioned morning practice.”

Dolezal is headed to Cal Poly on a scholarship to dive for Damron, who was named the Cal Poly dive coach in August 2022.

Damron describes Dolezal as a “very pragmatic diver.”

“He’s so viscerally aware of everything that happens that, literally, I can talk to him in the middle of the most complex dive, and we’re just connected, which is extraordinarily rare,” he said.

Damron recalls one practice where Dolezal performed a reverse pike dive. Halfway through the dive, Dolezal flipped his hair because it got in his eye.

“He looked over and smiled at me and then just crushed the dive,” Damron said.

The duo’s strong work ethic

Despite not diving from a young age, Dolezal and Bellardo have excelled because of their work ethic, according to Damron.

“I ask a lot from my divers,” he said. “We had our share of really bad cold, rainy days where almost no one wanted to be on the board. Both Julia and Justin never hesitated to get on.”

After winning league and placing top three in CIF, both divers reached state, where Dolezal placed 15th and Bellardo finished 27th.

“I tell them that I’m not necessarily looking for how they place and whether they’re on the podium, but how much fun they have during this experience,” Damron said. “I know that when you coach from your heart versus your fist, kids blossom.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2023 at 10:41 AM.