It was just after Thanksgiving of his freshman season at Iowa State University when John Deters '92 woke up one morning and decided the lifestyle of a Division I scholarship athlete wasn't the right fit for him.
"I had originally intended to go to Saint John's and play football," said the diver from Wayzata High School, whose older brother, Jeff '89, had been a starting defensive back for Saint John's, while another older brother played football at Augustana (S.D.).
"We were a football family. I was the crazy one who was more fearless and got into diving because we had a pool and trampoline in our backyard. I received multiple scholarship offers and accepted (one) from Iowa State. I also, in hindsight, mistakenly joined a fraternity that you had to live in as a freshman. So that was part of my undoing before I knew it.
"Between the hours of training required in a Division I sport, the demands of fraternity life and being an 18-year-old college freshman who didn't yet understand time management skills that well, I got burned out pretty fast. When I came home for Thanksgiving, I had mono due to being over-extended.
"I went back to Iowa State after break, woke up one morning and thought 'This is unsustainable.'"
Deters immediately called then-Johnnies football coach
John Gagliardi and then-swimming and diving coach Pat Haws '72 to tell them he wanted to transfer at the semester break.
Because he was transferring down in levels, he was eligible to compete at Saint John's right away, even though the swimming and diving season was already underway.
And he wasted no time making his presence felt.
"Boy oh boy, when he got here, the level of diving at Saint John's and in the MIAC immediately went way up," Haws recalls. "People saw the kinds of things he was capable of doing, even as a freshman, and they realized they had to increase the level of difficulty of their own dives if they wanted to keep up."
Deters, who finished second at the Class 2A state meet as a senior at Wayzata, went on to finish second in both the 1 and 3-meter events at the MIAC championships his freshman year, then earned All-America honors with a fifth place finish in the 3-meter at that year's NCAA Division III national meet.
That was good enough to convince him to set aside his plans of also playing football and focus on solely on diving.
"I didn't want to make the mistake I did at Iowa State and end up exhausted," he said.
As a sophomore, he won both events at the MIAC meet and finished third on 1-Meter and second on 3-meter at Nationals. But he still wasn't satisfied.
Far from it.
"I'm pretty competitive and know that it's rare to remember someone other than first place," Deters said. "(Finishing second at nationals) made me want to get after it. I pushed myself to do dives that made me uncomfortable. An old coach from high school had a saying…diving is all about getting comfortable being uncomfortable. This is a very true statement in this sport.
Those efforts kept paying off as Deters again won conference titles in the 1 and 3-meter events as a junior, then entered the Division III national meet at Emory University in Atlanta with two dives in his repertoire with a degree of difficulty of 3.0. Which, at the time, was the highest degree of difficulty possible.
"He was doing things that hadn't really been seen before at the Division III level," Haws said.
During the competition, Deters followed his ritual of purposely avoiding watching his fellow competitors, escaping to the locker room after each of his dives. He paid no attention to where he sat in the standings, leaving the scoreboard watching to Haws.
So when he mounted the board for his final dive, he didn't know what place he was in. But by the time he popped his head out of the water in the pool below, it became instantly clear.
"My final dive was a reverse 1.5 somersaults with 2.5 twists, which at the time was my most difficult dive," recalls Deters, who held a narrow two-point edge over his nearest competitor going into the last round. "But I hit it for 8's, and I remember when my head came out of the water, I could hear Pat going crazy. It was awesome. That's when I knew I'd won."
Indeed he had, finishing with a score of 457.40 to bring home the school's first swimming or diving national title.
"At the time, I knew it was a big and a great accomplishment, but it's really been in the years since that I've been able to put it into perspective more," Deters said. "I'm so proud to have been able to achieve that goal."
Deters went on to finish fifth in the 3-meter event. Then, as a senior the following year, he won his third-straight conference title in each event, and followed up by again earning All-America honors in both the 1 and 3-meter at nationals.
"Defending a title is not easy," he said. "I had a great meet my senior year, but ended up hitting the board on my reverse 2 ½ ss and breaking two fingers during finals which took me out of the race."
That meant he finished his career with six MIAC championships and seven All-America finishes out of a possible eight opportunities each.
But he said he would not have been as successful as he was were it not for the competition he faced every day in practice.
Especially from Eric Boyer '90, a teammate during his first two seasons at Saint John's who went on to become his diving coach, and Bret Beecher, an Edina High School graduate who transferred from Division I Hawaii prior to Deters' junior season.
And he also had plenty of praise for the role Haws played as his head coach.
"Pat wasn't a diving coach by nature, and he could be unusual in some of the approaches he took," Deters said. "He was able to think outside the box and a lot of times that worked out.
"And he was such an inspiration for our entire team. The guy never had a bad day. He was always upbeat. He was the quintessential positive coach. We were lucky to have him there."
