Jackson Maxwell saved his best for the right time.
The Swartz Creek senior won the first-place one-meter dive medal in mid March at the Division 2 Boys Swimming and Diving state finals. He had a semifinal score of 306.55 and a final score of 437.50 His closest competitor, with a 375.20 final score, was Sebastian Fay of Birmingham Seaholm. Maxwell scored all 20 of Swartz Creek’s points, and the team finished 21st out of 28.
John Maxwell, the team’s coach and Jackson’s father, coaches the swimmers and divers. He’s been the head coach at Swartz Creek for five years and assisted the girls’ program for five years prior to taking on his current role.
This was Jackson’s first state final. He started diving competitively his freshman year. “I would go to my dad’s meets when I was a little kid, and I would dive,” he recalled. “I would sit through practices and meets and watch. That interested me. I got to high school and I decided to give it a try. I never dove with a club team or went to camps for diving.”
To be a successful diver, “you have to learn to be eloquent and learn to do the dives,” Jackson said. “Once you do them, it becomes muscle memory. You have to repeat the dives. We do them all a bunch of times, so we get the feeling of where to tuck and how to come out of it.”
He placed sixth as a sophomore and 10th as a junior at the state meets.
“We knew there was a chance [for first place],” John said. “He was seeded fourth. If he dove well, there would be a chance he could pull it off and win. He worked very hard. He went in with a very good attitude that he would have fun his senior year, go in and do ‘the best I can and whatever happens happens.’ But he wanted to have fun. I knew he was going to do well. He was relaxed. His teammates kept him positive with encouragement. I had two other state qualifiers there as well. As a team, they went in that all three of them would do the best they could.
“His goal was to have a blast, and he did,” John said. “If he hit all of his dives and was consistent, then the chances of him placing higher were great. He did not make a mistake at all. He did very well.”
“I was seeded fourth at the state meet,” Jackson noted. “I was completely going to be happy if I took fourth place. I just wanted to take [top] eight and be all-state again. I realized I had a possibility of being a state champ after the ninth round of diving at the state meet. The kid that would have had a chance of besting me [messed up] one of his dives. Then I knew I had a big chance of winning the state meet.
“It wasn’t my best. I could have done better. My scores were average to above average. I didn’t miss any dives.”
Each season, Maxwell improved his diving performance. He felt his best improvement came during this fourth year. “I was high 200s my sophomore and junior year,” he said. “This year I went in the mid-300s. I went from a 287, which was my best last year, to a 351 this year for six dives.”
The regional and state meets consist of 11 dives.
Maxwell also swam two other races during the season, the 200 medley relay as a breaststroker and the 100 breaststroke. He was the team’s No. 1 breaststroker the last two seasons. He was seventh at the league meet in the 100 breaststroke. A four-sport athlete, he focuses on swimming and diving from November to March.
“After my junior year, I coached out in a Fenton area school some littler kids, and I got on the board a little bit,” he said.
He also plays football and soccer, and he runs track.
“Soccer is his favorite sport, but he excels the best at diving,” John Maxwell said. “In football, he’s a very talented kicker, one of the best in the state. He’s all-league all-district soccer player. He’s a 6’4″ high jumper. He’s a well-rounded athlete and loves every sport.”
He’s also a long jumper and sprinter in track. He’s been accepted at Kettering University in Flint to study in mechanical engineering. But he’s also looking at Hope College for the possibility of playing football.