Justin Toth was fourth in both the 1-meter and 3-meter boards at the 2025 NCAA Diving Championships to earn All-American honors in both sports. (NCAA Photo)
Justin Toth didn’t start diving until he was a high school junior in Pensacola, Fla., but the Centre College senior has already competed in the Division III NCAA Championships three times — and will be doing it again this season.
Even though the season is not at the halfway mark, Toth has already qualified for the NCAA Regionals and been named Southern Athletic Association Diver of the Week twice. He also won on the 1-meter board at last weekend’s Speedo Centre Invitational.
“The number of divers that actually qualify to go to regionals is not a lot and it is usually toward the end of the season when you do make the cut after you have refined all your skills,” said Toth. “I think our whole team is more advanced than the average divers. Our diving coach (Woody Franklin) is amazing. We put in a lot of work and it shows.”
Toth earned All-American honors at Birmingham-Southern in 2023 and 2024 before transferring to Centre and earning All-American honors again in 2025, Not bad for someone who never really thought of diving.
Toth was homeschooled and only went to a high school because he had played soccer his entire life and wanted to be on the high school team. He picked the school closest to where he lived which turned out to be the only high school in the country with a diving board at its swimming pool.
“I had a PE class and every Friday we had open swim, dive or whatever. I did gymnastics for a year and did taekwondo for seven years and was used to flipping around. I had a trampoline in my backyard. I was just messing around on the diving board and the high school swim coach saw me and said I needed to join the team,” Toth said.
That was near the end of his sophomore year so he did join the team as a junior after talking to one of his best friends who was a diver at another high school. He finished second at the Class AA state championship and then won the state title as a senior.
“I grew up literally doing every single sport and I was just blessed to be genetically athletic. I trained hard in whatever sport I did. I was always on the trampoline as a kid doing flips and that plus gymnastics and taekwondo just correlated to diving,” he said. “One of the biggest factors in diving is knowing where you are in the air and just flipping on the trampoline, taekwondo and gymnastics helps with all of that.
“I actually made it to state in gymnastics. Gymnastics was hard and probably built up my mentality the most out of any sport because I would go to school, would drive 45 minutes and have a four hour practice and then drive back for a year straight. That just burned me out, but I loved it and flipping.”
Despite his high school success, he never envisioned himself as a college diver or even going to college.
“After I won state I started getting a whole bunch of offers from colleges about diving,” the Centre senior said. “I know not everybody gets that opportunity and thought it would be selfish of me to not take advantage of it.”
He opted for Birmingham-Southern, a Division III school in the SAA, in large part because it was close to Pensacola. During his freshman year there was speculation the school might close but he stayed for his sophomore year even though others left.
“Then spring break my sophomore year all my friends were at my house and we got the email that the school was closing,” he said. “That was pretty late in the transfer deadline but thankfully a lot of SAA schools were very open to letting us transfer and I was very blessed to have the opportunity to come to Centre where most of my credits transferred. A lot of my friends came here, too. My mom also went here for two years and my grandparents still live in Louisville. My dad’s family lives in Cleveland. So by coming here I was still close to family.”
It didn’t hurt that Centre was moving into a new state of the art pool that makes it one of the best facilities in Division III.
“The pool definitely influenced me. My first season here was the first season in the new pool and that was cool,” he said.
There was no 3-meter diving board in high school and since he was never on a club team he had never dove off the higher board until college.
“It was fun to learn the 3-meter board. It was definitely scary at first being three times higher and you have to learn to deal with the fear and do it even when you are scared,” he said. “I would say one of the biggest factors that holds divers back is fear, especially in high school. Everyone is scared to do big tricks but I always wanted to do what everyone else didn’t want to do because that’s how you get better. So if other people were scared to do something, that’s what I wanted to do.”
He was ninth in the Division III nationals in 2023 on both the 1 meter and 3 meter boards. As a sophomore in 2024, he was fourth nationally in the 1-meter competition. After his transfer to Centre, he was fourth on both boards in 2025.
His goal coming into the season was to win a national championship.
“If I keep working hard, I truly believe I have a chance to win,” he said. “I think last year I stressed myself out trying too hard to win and it didn’t work out great. Everything I do is to enhance my chances to win but I don’t want to stress. I am gonna be happy as long as I try my best. I have always tried to set realistic goals since I started diving but sometimes I might have unrealistic expectations because I always want to be the best.”
Toth is a business major who interned for a Pinnacle Data Path in Huntsville, Ala., last summer and plans to work for the company as a sales representative after graduation. “It takes a lot of stress off (knowing about a job). I got to travel a little bit over the summer and meet some of the businesses that we work with and go into customer meetings. It was a lot of fun.”
One Response
Congratulations!! He has worked hard!