MOULTRIE — Wenbo Chen’s tenure as a coach of the Moss Farms Diving program did not get off to the smoothest start.

In 1994, he was headed to Georgia from Canada, where he was coaching, but because he forgot about the change associated with Daylight Saving Time, he and his family missed their flight to Atlanta.

He was quickly able to get another flight, but because his English then was not what it is now, he missed an announcement that his plane to Albany was leaving early.

Chen said he happened to check with airlines officials and learned that the flight had already boarded and the gates were closed.

Fortunately, he and his family were allowed on the plane and he was able to fly to Albany, where Rick Moss picked him up and took him to Moultrie.

It was the start of a long and productive relationship.

Chen says he loved Moultrie once he got here and Moss Farms officials knew they had an outstanding young coach to help Jay Lerew with their growing diving program. He started with Moss Farms on April 30, 1994.

A year later, Lerew and Chen led the Diving Tigers to Moss Farms only National Junior championship when the Nationals were held at the Moose Moss Aquatics Center.

The program continued to attract outstanding divers from around the country and to continue producing champions.

And when Lerew left in 1996 to take over the Team Orlando Diving program, Chen became Moss Farms head coach, a job he held until 2001.

Chen moved on to lead the Purdue diving program to new heights and is now the coach of the National Diving Center in Indianapolis.

He will return to Moultrie on Thursday to join Lerew as part of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame’s 2007 Class and will be inducted in that night’s banquet at the Colquitt County High cafeteria.

“I am so exited, so honored to be in the Hall of Fame,” he said this week.

Chen was born Aug. 15, 1961, in Zhan Jiang, Guang Dong, China. He was a member of the Chinese National Diving Team from 1973-1983 and was a National champion in 1977 and 1980.

He coached the Hunan Province Team from 1983-185 and was the head coach of China’s National Diving Team from 1985-1991. He trained a number of champion divers in China, including Chen Lin, who won the 1986 World Diving Championship on women’s platform, and Chen Xiaodan, who finished fifth on platform at the 1988 Olympic Games.

He also coached internationally in Germany, Austria, Italy, the USSR, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong.

Chen graduated from the Beijing Sports University in 1987. In 1991, he went to Canada to help coach the Edmonton Diving Club and in 1992-1993 coached with Fred Newport at the University of Illinois.

Chen was coaching the Edmonton Kinsmen Diving Club when he was contacted by Moss Farms Diving.

In 1997, Chen was selected as the Senior National Indoor Diving Coach of Excellence by his peers and led the Moss Farms girls team to a second-place finish in the Speedo National Diving Championships in Auburn, Ala.

That year, Brooke Bassham was a national champion on 1-meter. Jud Campbell, diving at the University of Georgia, won the SEC 1-meter championship in 1999.

Chen was instrumental in coaching Clayton Moss, who won three gold medals in the Cam-Am-Mex International Championships. Katie Beth Bryant won a gold medal and Lane Bassham a silver and a bronze at the Can-Am-Mex.

Bryant, who moved from Illinois to become part of the Moss Farms program, won two U.S. Diving Senior Championships while in Moultrie. Brent Roberts, Grant Gritzmacher and Bryant all moved to Moultrie from out of state to join Moss Farms.

He also coached the team of Lane Bassham and Lauryn McCalley to a gold medal in the synchronized 3-meter at Senior Indoor Nationals, qualifying them for the National Team.

He also coached Lane Bassham at the 2000 Olympic Trials at Federal Way, Wash.

Also among the outstanding divers he coached while in Moultrie were Trey Hart, Chad Sheldon, Nikki Unroe, Grace Cagle, Ashley Benner, Julia Hughes, Camila McLean and Hannah Moore.

And they excelled not only on the age group level, but at the college level as well.

Campbell, Hart, Brooke Bassham, Cagle and Moore went to Georgia; Roberts and Lane Bassham, to Alabama; Gritzmacher to Texas; McCalley to Tennessee; Moss to Kentucky; McLean to Harvard; Benner to North Carolina; Sheldon and Unroe to South Carolina; and Hughes to the College of Charleston.

Current Moss Farms divers Ryan Helms, Owen Blank and Anna Aguero, who also are expected to dive at the college level, also trained for a time under Chen.

Chen said that as a coach he stresses fundamentals, good mechanics and a strong finish.

And conditioning.

McCalley, who was named the NCAA Woman of the Year while at Tennessee and is now in pharmacy school at the University of Georgia, attests to Chen’s emphasis on conditioning and remembers one rather unusual exercise.

“When we did squats, instead of going to a gym or a weight room or a club, Wenbo would get up on my shoulders,” she said. “I was 16 and really skinny and he was not real little.

“I’d have to do three set of 10 squats. When he got off my back, I didn’t think I’d ever walk again. And we did that all the time. I think it was some kind of Chinese torture regimen.”

In 2001, Chen was looking for a new challenge and a chance to coach in Olympic Games and took the job as the head coach at Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind. The Boilermakers had never had a top-three finisher in the Big 10 meet or a top-8 finisher in an NCAA championships.

In his four years at Purdue, he had three divers win Big 10 championships and in 2004 had a diver take a third place finish at the NCAA Championships. He was named the Big 10 Coach of the Year in 2003.

When the U.S. Olympic diving team did not fare as well as hoped in the 2004 Olympic Games, U.S. Diving went looking for a coach for its National Training Center in Indianapolis. Chen accepted the position in April 2005.

In July, he was the head coach for the U.S. team that competed in the Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Chen is married to Wenyin Han, a former premier ballerina in China. They have two girls, Amy Yao and Annie Yuan.