Courtesy of Worcester Polytechnic Institute Athletics.
Maddy Sewell ’24 was the runner-up in the 1-meter and 3-meter diving events at the NEWMACs.
By Genevieve Zahner ’26
Staff Writer
Maddy Sewell ’24 is a junior on the swimming and diving team at Mount Holyoke who has earned numerous awards and accolades for her diving. Sewell’s swimming and diving journey began long before her time at Mount Holyoke. She first started 15 years ago when her mom signed her up for swim lessons.
“I would always go to class, and then I’d see the divers going and I’d be like, ‘Mom, that’s what I want to do,’” Sewell said. “She told me, ‘Oh, you can do that, but you have to keep up with swimming.’ So for a long time, I did both.”
Once Sewell reached high school, she decided to focus primarily on diving. Her favorite category of dive is a twister, which she does forwards and backward. “Backs are probably my favorite,” she said.
Although she was unable to visit Mount Holyoke during the application process due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sewell said the reason she fell in love with the school and with the swimming and diving team was due to a good friend she had growing up who had previously competed on the team.
“I [understood] what Mount Holyoke was because of her because she was the reason why I fell in love with the team,” Sewell said. “Then when I finally applied here, I met [Head Swimming and Diving Coach] Dave [Allen] and [Diving Coach] Rachael [Araujo] over Zoom. And so it just, like, instantly clicked. I [belonged] here.”
Sewell is one of two divers on the team and said that this was a challenge she had to overcome at the beginning of the season. Being part of such a small section of the team gave her more one-on-one time with her coaches, but she missed having more people on the dive team to practice with.
“I do miss some of my teammates, but the swimmers really stepped up and really made me feel part of them,” Sewell said.
Sewell earned the Diver of the Week title twice for the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference and was the runner-up at this year’s NEWMAC championship for both one-meter and three-meter springboard diving. She also placed within the top 12 at this year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Regional Diving Championship. Sewell was unsure of what her season was going to look like coming in, considering the fact that she was coming off of a back injury that led to her being pulled out of competition for most of last season. After the injury, she says she almost made the decision to leave the team entirely. “For a while, I didn’t even know if I wanted to come back, which was a choice that I’m glad I didn’t make.”
However, Sewell said, “About a month or two in, I did make that decision that I wanted to be at Regionals,” and although she did not qualify for this year’s national championship, she is still proud of the forward movement she has made in her career.
Coming back from her back injury has been a large part of Sewell’s development this season. She said working with a mental performance coach for sports has been a large part of what aided her in her journey back to the pool.
“I personally [met] with her once a week, but she [also met] with us as a team, I think biweekly, and she just goes over lessons and goes over what to do to have more of a positive mindset on things,” Sewell said. “She [helped] me a lot with getting over fear and such.”
Sewell said that since she was injured while diving, part of coming back to the pool involved facing her fears. Working closely with her coaches and the mental performance coach was a crucial part of her return and building trust in herself and her coaches.
“I trust [Rachael], and seeing that I’m safe, that I am not going to make that [same] mistake [that injured me],” she said, “it was more of telling myself, look, I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I’ve been doing this dive most of my life. I can’t let the one mistake that I [made] last year hold me back.”
Sewell says she has had many memorable experiences in diving, but one moment that stuck out was from this year’s NEWMAC championship.
“There was this moment between me and my coach where we realized that I got second place and [that] I was really close to being first,” she recalled. “She and I both kind of started breaking down together. It kind of surprised both of us … how well I did.”
Sewell also reflected on her journey towards that moment at NEWMACs. “It just kind of showed how much work I had been putting into the season and how much it’s paid off,” she said.
Diving has been part of Sewell’s life since she was little and has given her a significant release. “That’s where I go to de-stress from school … where I can go and have two hours where I don’t have to think about anything else,” she said. “That’s my happy place.”