UNC alumna Aranza Vazquez eyes diving medal in second trip to Olympic Games
With not one, not two, but four NCAA championships, Aranza Vazquez is an established elite diver.
Now, the first NCAA champion in North Carolina Tar Heels diving history aims to add an Olympic medal at her second Olympic games competing for Mexico.
The La Paz, Mexico, native is hoping to take it a step further this time around as her family watches her from back home. As she prepares to step onto the diving board for her prelim 3-meter dives Wednesday, she knows it’s just one step of her journey as she looks toward her ultimate goal.
“First going to semifinals and then from there going to finals,” Vazquez said of her Paris Olympic goals. “Once I’m in finals, I know I have a good chance and I really want the medal so my biggest goal is to medal. But also just being there, I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to do anything spectacular. I just have to do my dive.”
Her illustrious UNC career includes All-American nods, all-ACC academic team honors, the 2023 ACC women’s diver of the year and a Honda Award finalist. Most notably, Vazquez etched her name in the Carolina athletics books when she won UNC’s first-ever diving national championships, now a two-time 1-meter and a two-time 3-meter springboard national champion.
While the day she became a national champion might be almost a year and a half ago, the moment she won the 1-meter dive on March 16, 2023, will always be ingrained in her mind.
”So I just got out of the water and I knew I had won, but it wasn’t until I saw the scoreboard - my name going up to first that it finally hit me. I got out of the water - my teammates were running towards me and I started crying.”
Not to mention that in between collegiate seasons where she took home two national titles each season respectively, Vazquez earned two medals at the World Aquatic Championships, bronze in 1-meter springboard and silver in diving’s mixed 3-meter and 10-meter event, in Japan last summer.
But with all the wins, comes expectations on another level and that can take a toll on athletes. Once they win once, everyone expects them to win every single time. Vazquez turned to a sports psychologist to help her learn how to deal with expectations and perform even better.
“I caught myself doing the same thing that I started doing after my first Olympics after Tokyo, just putting a lot of expectations on myself,” Vazquez said. “You have to keep doing stuff so I made an appointment with a sports psychologist and have been going since and I absolutely love it.”
Vazquez competed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games representing Team Mexico and became the first female Olympic diver in UNC history. She finished sixth in the finals in the women’s 3-meter springboard competition.
After the collegiate season came to a close earlier this year, she took little time off before turning her focus to preparing for the Paris Olympics. While the practices leading up to the games were longer than during the school year, the big difference is Vazquez doesn’t have to deal with pressure like she did during the semester is the school side of things.
Now all she has to focus on is perfecting her dives and this time around, she isn’t a rookie like she was in the pandemic-affected Tokyo Games.
She’s made France her temporary home for the latter part of this summer, getting here more than a week and a half ago and experiencing the Olympic Opening Ceremony up close and personal with fellow Team Mexico divers.
“I think everything that I learned after the Olympics is again the pressure and being more selfish and just concentrating on what I have to do,” she said. “I think that’s going to help me a lot during this competition - I’m going with more expectations. My first Olympics, I was 18 and I really didn’t know what was going to happen. I think that [experience] is going to help me a lot just knowing what’s been working for me in the past years.”
Anna Laible is a student with UNC Media Hub, a program with the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, reporting from the Summer Olympics in Paris. Laible hosts the Speak Up Sports Podcast. Follow her journey covering her first Olympics on her Instagram (@anna_laible).
This story was originally published August 6, 2024 at 4:38 PM with the headline "UNC alumna Aranza Vazquez eyes diving medal in second trip to Olympic Games."