Violet Orsi was the only one on her team, but she certainly wasn’t alone.
Orsi is a junior at Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School, and she’s one of the top divers in Pennsylvania.
But Rush doesn’t have a swimming program, and Orsi was actually the only diver from a Public League school. She might not have had a team, but she certainly proved she belonged.
“It was pretty nervewracking, but I really wanted to do well since I was Philly’s only representative,” said Orsi, who lives in Bustleton. “I wanted to do my best. It was a very fun experience, Scary and nervewracking, but once I got on the board I knew what to do.”
It’s never easy competing against the best.
And it’s even scarier when you have to go alone.
Orsi actually needed help from Archbishop Wood to qualify for the event. Divers have to earn a score high enough to make states, and because Orsi wasn’t on a high school team, she needed to qualify at another meet.
Wood set it up so Orsi could compete at one of its meets during the season, and she scored well enough to qualify.
But this wasn’t the product of one great day for Orsi, it was a product of all the hard work she’s put in the sport since she started diving when she was 3.
“My older sister Isabella was diving, so I saw her and I thought it looked fun, I guess,” Orsi said with a laugh. “I started competing at 4. Seeing how much fun it was pushed me to want to do it and then I fell in love with it.
“I think I remembered doing like flips and backflips into the pool, until I hit my head. Then I just enjoyed being in the water and seeing how high I could get. I really loved it when I started doing it.”
That hasn’t changed.
While she doesn’t have a high school team she competes with, she joined a club in Princeton, New Jersey, and she practices with them usually four times a week. And the practices can be a few hours each time.
That’s a lot of diving, but practice is the key to success.
“It depends on workout, we split up my team, and we practice off 1-meter, 3-meter and 5-meter boards,” Orsi said. “I’m usually on1-meter, I just go and do all my dives, do all my voluntaries and all of my oppositions. Sometimes I’ll do about 30 and 40 dives. It’s fun, too, though, it’s not just hard.
“I push myself, even though at states I didn’t do my best, I still got back up and pushed myself harder. I’ll do better next year. Failing the dive and not doing the best isn’t going to affect how hard I’m going to work. I work really hard because I want to get better.”
She’s already eyeing next year, where she’ll go into diving season with the goal of once again getting to states. And now she knows what she’s up against.
“I wouldn’t say next year will be easier, but I’ll have more of an idea of where I’m going,” Orsi said. “I think I’m going to keep pushing myself even harder, I just have an idea of what will happen, but I’ll still push myself.”
Orsi always pushes herself, be it in on the board or in the classroom, where she not only gets great grades, she is a talented singer.
“I like to sing rock and I like country rock stuff,” Orsi said. “I’ll usually sing whatever we’re doing in class. I did jazz, that was fun.
“Singing in public is more nervewracking than diving. I get pretty big stage fright. On the board, I’m able to focus, I know what I’m supposed to do. In singing, I could mess myself up, so it’s a little bit harder in front of people.
“I like the Cranberries and Fleetwood Mac, Zombie, sometimes Billie Eilish. I’ve done Simple Man by Shinedown, that was one of my favorite performances. Me and my dad sing that a lot. He isn’t a great singer,” she said with a laugh.
But he is a great dad.
In fact, Orsi loves singing the praises of her family and friends.
She credits them with a lot of her success. Luckily, there’s plenty of success to go around.
“I have my parents, my sister, all my animals, my Grandma and Papa, my Noona and Nonno, my cousins, my aunts. They come to some of my meets, they go whenever they can make it, which is great. And I have my best friend Clara Ciamaichelo. I’ve been friends with her since diapers, and her brother as well. And her parents are like second parents, we have a great relationship.
“I just want to say thanks to everyone who has supported me, everyone I just said. It’s been rough and being in high school, it’s a lot. But knowing I’m making people proud pushes me. Especially my parents. They do everything for me. I just think of all the times when I didn’t have my license, they drove me everywhere. They are always there for me.”
She’s also proud that she represented Rush in such a great way, and hopes to continue working toward the goal of doing even better next year.
“I know I want to do better, and I’m working on it,” she said. “I’m going to work hard all year and do my best next year.”
