In an effort to be crowned league champions for the first time since 2012, the Ithaca College men’s swim and dive team has found an unusual diving duo in sophomore swimmer Ignacio Fernandez-Manzano and rower Andrew Cheely.
Senior diver Kian Long began the season as the teams’ sole diver, after Samuel Smith ’25 and Ethan Godfrey ’25 graduated in May. Diving coach Chris Griffin said his main goal during the offseason was figuring out how to fill the holes Smith and Godfrey left behind.
“It’s a small sport, so trying to find recruits … is difficult,” Griffin said. “We need numbers. The other side of it is, particularly in the Liberty League, for our championships, we don’t have that many athletes competing in diving. There are kind of free points on the table if somebody is willing to try and learn a new sport.”
The Bombers have been stuck in second in the Liberty League Championship Tournament since the 2021-22 season, behind the Rochester Institute of Technology. RIT has had between three and five rostered divers per year, but it entered 2024-25 with only two, leaving an opportunity for the Bombers to get closer to the crown.
Griffin’s answer came from two vastly different places. When Griffin returned from paternity leave at the start of the Fall 2025 semester with no incoming recruits, he sat down with the teams’ other coaches to discuss roster changes. Griffin decided to talk with Fernandez-Manzano, who he believed would be more valuable in scoring points for the team as a diver than a swimmer.
The other addition was Cheely, who met Griffin when he took his Basic Springboard Diving class in Spring 2025. While Griffin was actively looking for potential divers as he taught, he said he initially wrote Cheely off because of his involvement with the men’s rowing team.
Cheely said he joined the class because he was looking for an extra half credit, and it sounded fun. He enjoyed it enough that he approached Griffin when he heard that there were openings for divers. Cheely and Griffin worked closely to find a way for Cheely to become a two-sport athlete.
“He threw in extra practices for me, one-on-one, two or three times a week, so that I could keep going to rowing practice every day in the afternoon,” Cheely said. “As long as he could be flexible, and he knew that rowing was still my main priority, then why not?”
The team has benefitted from athletes switching sports before, including Benjamin Pesco ’20, who stopped pole vaulting after a hamstring injury, and Lindsey Duhamel ’21, who transferred from the women’s soccer team in her junior year. Griffin said it is very common for athletes like gymnasts to join diving after an injury, but it is uncommon to participate in two sports at IC.
There is little overlap in the skills behind swimming and diving. Fernandez-Manzano said the only similarity is that they happen at a pool. Although he dove for the first time in September, he said he has noticed his skills improving.
“As I do more, [Griffin] is telling me more details I have to fix,” Fernandez-Manzano said. “You have to take it step-by-step — if you have too many things in your head, then you’re gonna smack.”
Cheely said the transition between sports has been mental as well as physical. He said there is more pressure in diving, where you throw six dives per meet, compared to the thousands of strokes in each regatta.
“[In rowing], if things aren’t going well or everything burns, you just gotta push through,” Cheely said. “Whereas at diving, I figured out really quickly that if your dives aren’t going well, and you just try to muscle through, they get worse. It doesn’t work the same.”
The duo has been aided through the process by Long and members of the women’s team.
“Our veteran divers are really good about taking them under their wing, taking a few extra minutes to help them through the extra drills and give them encouragement where they need,” Griffin said. “[Long] understands the value for the men’s team, and how much it means to him to have somebody by his side competing. He’s been instrumental in helping them progress along.”
Cheely said that he and Fernandez-Manzano have had similar diving lists in recent meets, creating friendly competition between them that pushes them to do their best. He also values having someone learning the sport with him.
“Thank God [Fernandez-Manzano] is there, because we smack together, and we learn new dives together all the time,” Cheely said.
Both Cheely and Fernandez-Manzano are prepared to play their part in the team’s push toward the Liberty League championship. Their role was highlighted at the Ithaca College Bomber Invitational, where IC was the only school with three male divers. After championships, it is unclear where their interests will take them.
“It’s kind of a season thing this year,” Fernandez-Manzano said. “We’ve never won our Liberty League championship before. This year’s our biggest shot, we have to win, but we have that limitation on the diving side. This is what we’re willing to do to win. For now, that was the decision I took. Next year is a huge question.”
