The youngest member of the Australian National Squad Alysha Koloi, is fresh off triple national titles from the recent Diving Australia Junior National Championships and days away from flying out to her inaugural Junior World Championships. Koloi sat down to talk results from Junior Nationals, her experiences as part of National Teams and what it’s like training with World and Commonwealth Games Champions.

How did you first get into diving?

Koloi – My little sister, Sophie, was in diving and I was really looking for a change in what I was doing with my gymnastics. I saw Sophie doing it one day and was just like, “I want to give it a try.” So then I gave it a go with Chandler Diving Club in Brisbane and Mr. Wang saw me, brought me into his group, and that’s that.

Since making your way onto the national squad last year, what has been your favorite memory as part of that team?

Koloi – Just all the opportunities that I get now from being on the team, such as getting to travel to places like Germany and Singapore. Whenever we travel as a team it’s just like being part of a big family, we are all just hanging out and get to meet people from all different countries which is an opportunity that I never would have had otherwise.

Being a springboard diver, what is it like being able to train with World Champion Maddi Keeney and Commonwealth Games Champion Georgia Sheehan?

Koloi – It just gives you so much inspiration of what you can look forward to, how to work hard and compete at that high level. It’s really great to have them as training partners and it really shows that if they can do it, I can as well.

Your Coach Ady Hinchliffe has been in Brisbane for a little over a year now, what impact has he had for the Brisbane squad since coming here?

Koloi – Since him coming here the atmosphere in the community has been great, it’s really positive, everyone is striving to work hard because he is encouraging everyone to push themselves, raising the bar and just making the team get stuck right into it.

You’ve just come off three Gold Medals from three events at Junior Nationals in Hobart, what kind of confidence does that give you heading into the World Junior Championships in Kiev?

Koloi – It really helps show me that I can in fact do that kind of performance again. With a good performance under my belt not too far out from Kiev, I can hopefully just replay that and it will give me a good start to build off.

With just a couple days before you fly out, what will you be working on from now until day one of the competition?

Koloi – I really need to work on my basics and especially my entries, generally just clean up everything. I might try and play with some different dives but it really boils down to working on cleaning up what I have now. I have done a lot of open competitions recently and coming back to a junior event means that I need to do those basic dives again which can be really difficult if you haven’t done them in a while. I am more of a power based diver and on those you really need to control and show great technical positions.