MOULTRIE – ElliReese Niday has become one of the youngest divers in history to win a national championship.
The Moultrie diver, who turned 13 in February, won the platform title on Thursday at USA Diving’s National Championships held in Auburn, Ala.
Niday, who competes for coach John Fox’s War Eagle Dive Club, had a two-day total of 721.40 points.
She won by 10 points over Bayleigh Cranford of Longhorn Aquatics.
After leading by 23.6 points over Indiana’s Ella Roselli after the prelims, she led by 40 points over Cranford in the semifinals.
In Thursday’s finals, she opened by scoring more than 80 points on two of her first five dives and held off Cranford for the championship.
And although the top two individuals qualify for this year’s World Championships in Singapore, Niday will be unable to compete because she will be too young. She won’t turn 14 before the end of the year.
Fox, who also was her coach at Moss Farms Diving before becoming the head coach at Auburn University and the War Eagle Dive Club in 2023, called Niday’s victory “surreal, really really surreal.”
“Right now, we just want to make sure we walk humble,” he said.
Niday is the youngest diver to win a senior national title in an individual event since 13-year-old Hailey Hernandez claimed the 3-meter event at the Winter Nationals in 2016.
Also in 2016, Tarrin Gillaland won a national title in synchronized diving at 13.
USA Diving also lists Majorie Gestring as winning a senior individual title in 1936 as a 13-year-old.
Niday has won seven junior national championships and took three gold medals in the 2023 Junior Pan American Championships.
But she was injured and did not compete at Junior Nationals last summer.
Healthy in December, she was fifth in the 2024 USA Diving Winter Nationals.
Fox credits Niday’s learning a new dive that increased her degree of difficulty and being able to compete in her home pool in Auburn with helping her eclipse her Winter Nationals performance.
Niday will compete twice in June.
She will participate in the Canada Cup of Diving to be held June 5-8 in Gatineau, Canada, and in the American Cup, set for June 12-15 in Morgantown, W.Va.
Also on tap for her this summer are the Junior National Championships, which will be held July 25-Aug. 3 in Mission Viejo, Calif., and the Junior Pan American Games, scheduled for Aug. 9-23 in Asuncion, Paraguay.
Fox said his young diver is mature enough to deal with her success at the sport’s highest levels.
“Diving is not her identity,” he said. “She is more than just a diver.
“And she doesn’t dive just to win. She dives to glorify the Lord.”
Niday is the daughter of Moultrie’s Lauryn McCalley Niday, a two-time national springboard champion who was inducted recently into the University of Tennessee’s Athletics Hall of Fame.