SMU diving star Luke Sitz was named ACC Men’s Diver of the Year, while Darian Schmidt earned ACC Men’s Diving Coach of the Year honors after a historic season.
DALLAS - SMU diving continues to climb on the national stage, and now the accolades are matching the results.
After a breakthrough 2025-26 season, Luke Sitz has been named the ACC Men’s Diver of the Year, while SMU head diving coach Darian Schmidt picked up ACC Men’s Diving Coach of the Year honors.
For SMU, the awards are another sign the program is entering a new era of prominence in the ACC and nationally.
Sitz, already one of the top names in college diving, put together a season that was impossible to ignore. The sophomore captured the NCAA title on 1-meter with a score of 428.10, giving SMU its first national championship in that event.
He nearly added another title on the 3-meter, finishing runner-up with a school-record 495.30, just 2.45 points shy of first place.
Those performances helped make Sitz one of the biggest stories in men’s college diving this season. He earned First-Team All-America honors in both springboard events and showed dramatic growth from a year earlier, especially on 3-meter, where his NCAA score improved by 139.45 points from his freshman campaign.
He also delivered at the ACC Championships, winning the conference crown on 1-meter with a then-school-record 429.75 and adding a bronze medal on 3-meter with a 420.60.
Sitz’s consistency showed up throughout the season, too. He was named ACC Diver of the Week five times this year and now owns 11 career weekly conference awards.
Beyond the college season, he also stacked medals at major international and national meets in 2025, continuing to build one of the strongest resumes in the sport.
Schmidt’s honor feels just as significant. In nine seasons at SMU, he’s helped transform the diving program, coaching multiple All-Americans, rewriting school records and guiding divers to 18 conference titles.
With Sitz leading the way, Schmidt’s impact has never been clearer, and SMU is now seeing the payoff in both championships and major conference recognition.
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