MOULTRIE — She says it has been “forever,” but it really has only been about eight years that Hannah Moore has wanted to dive at the University of Georgia.

And next year, she will get that chance.

The Moss Farms and Colquitt County High diver signed on Thursday to join Georgia’s outstanding swimming and diving program.

One of the nation’s top age-group divers, Moore will join coach Dan Laak’s Georgia diving team in 2007, following a long line of Diving Tigers who have competed for the Bulldogs.

Moore, who is the daughter of Ronnie Moore and Becky Moore, a teacher at Colquitt County High, is the first Moss Farms diver to sign at Georgia since Brooke Bassham and Grace Cagle in 2001.

But Georgia has had the benefit of a number of outstanding divers trained in Moultrie, going back to Scotty Morris in the early 1970s and also including David Howard, Lori Mock, Todd Murphy, Jeff Moss, Trey Hart and Jud Campbell.

Moore is expected to carry on the tradition.

“(Laak) said he wants me to win an NCAA championship before I graduate,” Moore said. “He thinks I can do it.”

If her junior diving career is an indication, she will have a shot.

Moore has qualified for the Junior National Diving Championships each of the last eight years and in August competed in 2006 Senior Diving Champion-ships, finishing ninth in the 3-meter finals in The Woodlands, Texas.

In 2003, she qualified for the U.S. team that competed in the Pan Am Games in Brazil.

Moore won the Georgia high school 1-meter championship in 2004 as a freshman and was second as a sophomore.

Last year, she finished second again, losing out to Duluth High’s Lexie Bryant, currently a freshman at Georgia.

“This is a big payoff for her,” said Moss Farms coach Ed Goodman, noting all the years of training that have gone into being considered by a top Division I program such as Georgia’s. “Now she is going to have the chance to experience a college career.

“And if you can do it in the SEC, you can do it nationally.”

Goodman calls Moore “a natural.”

“She’s just so talented,” Goodman said. “And she is one of those who can take two weeks off and come back and never miss a beat.”

And there are other attributes Georgia will receive when Moore arrives in Athens.

“She’s a great student and she’ll be a great teammate,” Goodman said. “They are going to love her there just like we do here.”

And while it may seem that it was a foregone conclusion that Moore would go to school she has been a fan of for so long when it offered her a full scholarship, that was not necessarily the case.

For six years, Moore was coached at Moss Farms by Ron Piemonte.

Earlier this year, Piemonte was named the head coach at Virginia Tech and he actively recruited his former diver.

And Moore, who liked Piemonte as a person and a coach, considered becoming a Hokie.

But the call of Athens was too strong.

“Virginia Tech was just too far away,” she said.

The Georgia swimming and diving program is a strong one.

The women’s program claimed three consecutive national championships in 1999, 2000 and 2001, including 13 individual titles in the first two years alone.

The women won five SEC titles from 1997-2001 and added another conference crown last spring.

The Lady Bulldogs became the first Georgia program in history to win three straight national crowns and the first women’s team to capture five straight league titles.

Last spring, the Lady Bulldogs were second at the NCAAs and the Bulldogs wound up ninth.

The women’s diving team this season includes Bryant, senior Emily Hunter and sophomore Natalie Thomas, with Moore expecting to join Thomas, Bryant and perhaps another freshman diver next fall.

Moore said she will major in landscape agriculture, which, ironically, is offered only at Virginia Tech and Georgia.

“But Georgia has the biggest program in the country,” she said.

Becky Moore said she was “thrilled” at Hannah’s decision to go to Georgia.

And she expressed appreciation for the program that enabled her daughter to become one of nation’s top young dives.

“The community has been so supportive of Moss Farms diving,” she said. “If it wasn’t for that, we couldn’t support that facility (the Moose Moss Aquatic Center).

“This really is a tribute to this community.”