From Training to Trials: How Kelly Straub and Olympian Coach Mark Bradshaw Prepared for the National Stage

When new head coach Mark Bradshaw met his student-athletes for the first time in the summer of 2020, senior Kelly Straub told him two things. First, she wanted to learn all that she could from her new coach in her senior year. Second, she wanted to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Diving Trials. 

So, they got to work. 

Straub is a longtime leader of the Irish diving team, selected as a 2020-21 team captain and owner of multiple program records. However, her subsequent season working with Bradshaw proved to be a breakout year for the Omaha native, earning a bronze medal on platform at the ACC Championships and breaking two program records, one on the 1-meter and one on platform. 

After an honorable mention All-America performance at the NCAA Championships, Straub reached her next goal of qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Diving Trials. She will compete on the 3-meter on Tuesday, June 8. 

Her journey wasn’t an easy one, but her qualification was a culmination of work by the coach and athlete duo of Bradshaw and Straub.

The first of Straub’s program records this season came in January, when she compiled dives off the 1-meter for a 340.35 in the Shamrock Invitational, which broke the previous record that had stood since 2012. It came as a result of her training, but also as a result of mental preparation and a competitive mindset.

“Before the event today, I challenged Kelly to get that record, more or less just to see how she would react,” Bradshaw shared that evening. “That’s one thing she needs to work on, is her ability to raise her game a notch in the contest. She did that, obviously, very, very well.”

“It’s surreal,” Straub expressed after breaking the record. “All my hard work is finally blossoming into something that I’ve wanted for such a long time. […] The work that I put in, practice in and out of the pool, the weightlifting program, paid off. I have so much respect for my coach. I owe everything to him. He has really helped me blossom into who I am today.”

From there, Straub moved on to the ACC Championships, where she reached finals in all three events, one of just two female divers in the conference to do so. With teammate Annie Wiese also qualifying for finals on the 1- and 3-meter, Notre Dame was the only ACC program to qualify multiple female divers in finals for two events. North Carolina, Duke, Miami and Georgia Tech each qualified multiple divers in just one event. 

After claiming her bronze medal on platform, shattering her previous record with a score of 297.35, Straub prepared for the NCAA Zone meet and NCAA Championships. At the national meet, she earned honorable mention All-America status on the 3-meter.

With all the success during the collegiate season, Straub turned her sights toward the next goal: the U.S. Olympic Trials. And, as Bradshaw noted, with a talent level already present, the task became preparing for a heightened competitive situation. 

“Kelly is very talented in terms of her physical level of ability, and with her experience diving as long as she has, I’m just like, ‘Wow, this is the type of diver that I really aspire to get every single recruiting cycle that I can,’” the Irish coach shared. “Someone who is able to move, who’s really athletic, can spin fast, jump well, those types of things, because the sky’s really the limit.” 

With Straub’s talent level, Bradshaw, an Olympian himself, noticed that there were adjustments to be made in her training regiment to better prepare her for consistent, high-level competition and dives. They aimed to produce a set with five well-executed dives, without mistakes. The answer? Simulate competition in training. 

Right at the beginning of practice, Bradshaw would give Straub a limited warmup period, and then they would run through each of the five dives in order, with a consistent amount of time between each. 

“Through this routine, we try to capture it all consistently within a range, without one being kind of out of character,” Bradshaw said. “Get every dive in there for 7s or above, instead of four for 7s or above and then one for 5.”

“A lot of people could say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s diving, that’s the whole thing.’ But, she wants to get to that level. She wants to get to that next step, and you have to be five-for-five, or in the collegiate program, six-for-six, and she’s gotten better at it.”

Bradshaw represented the United States in the 1988 Olympic Games, finishing fifth on the 3-meter. In addition, he served as Finland’s head diving coach for the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games. With a plethora of knowledge regarding competition at the highest level, he says Straub has made it a point to ask questions and take coaching. 

“Kelly is consistently approaching me about how she can get better, so I share with her everything that I have in my toolbox that goes way back to all my experiences, similar struggles I had, or other divers that I knew,” he expressed. “She has bought into everything, she’s tried everything and she hasn’t shied away from asking, ‘What can I do to be better?’ instead of expecting a coach to hand feed her everything. 

“She’s thinking outside of herself, and that’s to her benefit. She’s taken the things that I’ve experienced, and I’ve been able to relate to her, and I think it’s helping.” 

With divers like Straub leading the way, the future is bright for Notre Dame Diving, considering the coaching, the track record and the opportunity for an education. 

“Notre Dame Diving has a representative at the Olympic Diving trials, and that’s good, that’s great exposure,” Bradshaw noted. “It tells the young people out there looking at schools that, ‘Notre Dame is a place where I can go. If I have Olympic dreams, I can still go there and compete at a high level and get my degree.’”

Straub will represent the Blue and Gold on a national stage in Indianapolis, a program with a bright future and years of past success. She’ll represent her teammates and coaches, trainers and advisors who prepared her for the moment. But mostly, she’ll represent herself and the goal she set upon her first meeting with her new coach, who will be watching from the deck, just as he has all season.