The Eastern Illinois football team has 90 players and 10 coaches.

The men’s and women’s basketball teams have a combined 23 players and eight coaches.

Eastern’s diving team is a different story.

“We don’t have an actual coach who can devote their time to us and watch us practice,” freshman Allie McKenze said.

The Eastern diving team has six members and no coach. The divers are independent and in reality, coach themselves.

“We feed off each other a lot,” McKenze said. “The older guys are experienced and we learn a lot from them.”

Ray Padovan is the only coach for the 55-member swimming and diving team and it is difficult for him to help everyone individually each and every day.

Padovan was a swimmer in college and, while he tries to help the divers as best he can, his expertise is with the swimmers.

“He comes by and watches a couple dives,” sophomore Joe Laird said of Padovan. “He helps us out and gives us moral support, but most of the time we are on our own.”

The athletes understand that one coach cannot keep an eye on a whole team.

“He does a lot for us,” McKenze added. “But he has a big team to take care of. It’s difficult.”

To help with their dives Eastern purchased a video camera system that records their dives in practice. It is displayed on a television next to the pool a minute later and they can critique themselves.

During practices the swimmers do short, timed circuits and the divers have to wait to take a few dives in between these circuits.

“During practice I can wait up to 10 minutes between dives and that does not help me at all,” said junior Dave Trabilsy. “Lots of times my classes conflict with practice so I go and dive during open swim. It’s great to go then because I don’t have to dive around the swimmers.”

Despite the disadvantages the diving team has compared to the swimmers, there are no hard feelings and they are united as a single team, Laird said. “We’re part of the team. We hang out together, cheer on and help each other. There is not a diving team or a swim team. It’s just the team.”

The Eastern diving team is like many diving teams around the country: small. Eastern has a total of six divers, three men and three women.

In high school McKenze had the luxury of having a larger diving team at Naperville North than Eastern has.

But Laird has been a part of small squads throughout his career.

“I started diving my junior year in high school and the team consisted of me and one other guy,” Laird said. “My coaches were my parents.”

Eastern’s six members is actually a large number compared to other teams in the Mid-Continent Conference.

The Mid-Con boasts 11 teams in 10 sports.

Of those 11 teams, seven have swimming programs and just five of them have diving teams.

IUPUI, Western Illinois and Oakland have diving teams and were joined by South Dakota State and Eastern just this season.

When looking at team rosters, there are only 22 divers in all of the Mid-Con conference.

Having such a small group of competitors makes for an interesting dynamic.

“At competitions the divers from opposing teams get together and we have a good time,” Laird said. “I really don’t see divers on opposing teams as opponents, just people who know how to do what I do.”