It’s not enough that Aranza Vazquez Montaño is already the most decorated diver in the history of the UNC program. The only Tar Heel ever to win an NCAA title – which she’s done four times – Vazquez Montaño now has her sights set on a bigger prize. Countless Carolina athletes are national champions. Only a select few can call themselves Olympic champions.
Vazquez Montaño will chase the gold at the Olympic Games in Paris, representing her native Mexico in the three-meter springboard diving competition, which begins on August 7. It’s an event in which she’s won two straight national titles on the collegiate circuit, but the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad represent a major step up. They are, to use a term which wouldn’t scare someone like Aranza, the deep end.
But Vazquez Montaño has been here before. Back when she was still just another UNC diver, she represented Team Mexico in the pool at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, placing sixth. It would be a career highlight for most, but Vazquez Montano told Chapelboro the aftermath sent her to one of her lowest points.
“Going to the Olympics and realizing I was good, I started putting pressure on myself,” she said. “It wasn’t coming from my coaches at all, or from the team. Everyone wanted me to do well because they knew I could, not because they expected me to. But I didn’t understand that at the time.”
Her confidence shaken, living in a foreign country still wrapped in the throes of a worldwide pandemic, and navigating the challenges of being a student-athlete, Vazquez Montaño’s career stood at a crossroads. Then, she said, the switch flipped.
“It woke me up, made me realize that nothing is given to you. Yeah, you’re the best one day, but that’s it,” Vazquez Montaño said. “The next day, you have to work hard, or even harder, for you to be there again. I think that’s the turning point I’ve had in my career so far.”
The results can be seen in Vazquez Montaño’s extensive resume: back-to-back national titles in the one-meter and three-meter NCAA competitions, as well as two straight ACC Women’s Diver of the Year awards and two straight Honda Award nominations.
Aranza Vazquez Montaño is a four-time national champion. She is the only diver in UNC history to win an NCAA title. (Image via UNC Athletic Communications)
It has fueled her personal growth both inside and outside the pool and inspired her teammates, none more so than rising sophomore – and Aranza’s younger brother – Rodolfo Vazquez Montaño.
“She’s confident and positive that she can do it. She’s done it a million times before,” Rodolfo told Chapelboro. “I think that’s what has helped her the most. She knows how to do it, and she’s confident about it.”
And what takes more confidence than jumping off a platform raised nearly 10 feet in the air, then contorting your body in elaborate combinations, often not even seeing the water before you land with a splash? For every child who’s struggled to make that first leap off the high dive, it boggles the mind.
But that’s what Aranza Vazquez Montaño will do in Paris, now with a fuller sense of self – and a fuller trophy case – than she had three years ago in Tokyo.
Featured image via UNC Swimming and Diving on Twitter
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