Sports
February 16, 2023 • THE VILLAGER | PAGE 19
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HIGHLANDS RANCH GOLF CLUB: PATIO HOME. RARE MAIN FLOOR MASTER SUITE. PERFECTION. OVER $150,000 REMODEL. $800,000 Luke Ogren and coach Jeff Smith at a meet in Sweden.
same, and that’s what I was good at in gymnastics.” Luke found his way to the Dive5280 Club in 2021 and found himself diving in several meets outside of Denver. “There are only three diving clubs in the area,” explains Jeff Smith, “so, there are few local meets. Luke qualified for the AAU nationals in San Antonio based on his scores in the meets we traveled to.” Clean-cut, well-spoken and unusually personable for an early teen, Luke admits he was shocked, to put it mildly, when he was invited to the meets in Sweden. The only Coloradan among 41 divers from the United States to make the trip, he was among competitots from seven nations. “When I got the invitation to go to Sweden,” he says, “it kind of hit me: I’m diving internationally. I’d never been around so many good divers. The competition was intense. Everybody there was good. “I was thinking to myself, ‘This is my competition, so I gotta get better.’” Smith believes it was a great realization for his precocious protege. “His experience in Sweden only increased his drive,” Smith says. “Being able to compete at the international level at this age, and with his limited exposure to the sport, really opened his eyes to what is achievable in the world of
diving.” The Olympics are the ultimate goal, but Luke will still be a teenager when the Olympic Trials are held in Knoxville in June 2024, so the Paris Games, which will run from July 26 to August 11, seem a stretch. A more realistic target is the 2028 Summer Olympics— known officially as the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad—to be held in Los Angles. Luke will be a collegian by then, representing (he hopes) either Notre Dame, Duke, North Carolina, Northwestern or
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Indiana (his current list of collegiate diving programs that interest him the most). Next on his agenda is the 2023 high school season, which begins next week. “I’m hoping to win state,” he admits without hesitation. Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 15 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@ comcast.net.
'Hey, can you pitch? Since their inception in 1993, the Rockies had never asked a position player to pitch in one of their games. But in the 12th inning against the Atlanta Braves on August 22, 2000, they had no choice. 16 Pitches tells how catcher Brent Mayne, who had never pitched at any level, became the first fielder since the Yankees' Rocky Colavito in 1968 to be the winning pitcher in a Major League game, and the storybook way Colorado won for him. Order at Amazon.com.
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