It was about quality, not quantity, for Park City prep divers at the Utah high school state diving meet last week at Brigham Young University.

Head coach Gene McIntyre made the trip with just two divers, Hayley Ehlers and Kaitlin Owens, and returned with top-10 medals for both girls a coach of the year honor for himself.

Ehlers finished in eighth place and Owens in tenth. The accomplishment was even more noteworthy because both girls are underclassmen and were competing in their first state championship meet. The girls executed 11 dives in the state competition.

“They did a nice job,” said McIntyre.

Besides Ehlers and Owens, McIntyre coached a handful of other participants at the state meet. He leads the private SLAP diving program in both Park City and Salt Lake City and coaches a handful of top high school divers including boys’ state champion Nic Suder of Jordan High School.

Ehlers made the move to diving after being a gymnast for many years. Owens has been participating in the SLAP program for three years, but this is the ninth grader’s first full year of high school competition.

“I was very pleased,” McIntyre said. “I had no expectations. The end result was extremely positive.”

Ehlers didn’t have much of a learning curve in the sport. She already knew how to do most of the twists and flips; it was just tweaking them for diving.

“The spatial awareness and spinning and twisting, Hayley has,” McIntyre said.

Owens, who attends the Waterford School in Salt Lake, said that her first state meet went very smoothly.

“I wasn’t that nervous,” she said. “It was a lot like other meets.”

It may have helped that each participant chooses a list of dives and for every high school competition throughout the season. Owens is a specialist on inward dives and included plenty of them in her list.

Owens said she is focused on earning a college diving scholarship and has devoted herself to the sport. She plans to attend diving camps at colleges across the country this summer and to continue to train with the SLAP program.

Unfortunately, the meet was held on a Thursday, meaning that both girls had to miss school and most of their friends and family couldn’t drive down to Provo to cheer them on, but the girls did their best.

“It was hard,” Owens said.

Things should only get better for the two Parkites. According to McIntyre, many of the top finishers at the state meet will graduate this year, making room for the two to rise up the ranks next year. McIntyre said that in the next few years their repertoire will also be growing. Right now, their list of dives are all at a medium level of difficulty. But both girls are year-round divers. So, by next year, they could be spinning themselves toward a championship.

“I expect them to be on top,” McIntyre said.

Most of their dives are singles that include one of five elements: front or back flips, inwards, reverses or twists. But by next year the girls should easily be performing double tricks.

“The more elements you do with good results, you’ll see the score go up much higher,” McIntyre said.