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Diana Caskey (Princeton '85)Head Swimming Coach -- Columbia |
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Bio
 What was your experience in youth athletics? Were there opportunities available to you?
In swimming there were opportunities. I started out at the local YMCA and the Princeton area had an aquatics association, a United States Swimming club, so yes there were opportunities. My high school though, Princeton High, where I went the first two years did not have a swimming team so I was fortunate enough to be able to go swim at Peddie. The Peddie School out in Hightstown, New Jersey,where they did have swimming that was affiliated with school. It was definitely a separation issue when you weren’t on a team that your high school housed; I was always at a separate practice, which was a little divisive.
What other sports did you play as a kid?
I played soccer and did field hockey and played tennis, but once I decided that swimming was what I wanted to focus on they kind of went by the wayside so that was more like in middle school.
How did an Ivy League experience affect your athletics pursuits?
I knew I wanted to go someplace where academic where important as well as athletics. So I think it was a balance of that that made me consider the Ivy League schools. I don’t know that I thought there were more opportunities or fewer opportunities. I knew there were swimming programs at all of those schools but I think it was the balance of those two that attracted me to that. My dad also went to Princeton so I grew up with that Ivy League mentality as a goal when you’re that you’re shooting for.
What is it like to coach in the Ivy League having graduated from a different Ivy school? Are there still emotional attachments to Princeton?
No, my blood bleeds blue now! What’s great to see is how far on a continuum, how far things have come in women’s athletics since I’ve been a participant. At that juncture the Princeton program was over 10 years old, but we were still very much in a transition phase there and it’s just really rewarding to see how many more opportunities there are and how much better the programs are treated— the equality that has started to come about. I’m sure I would have seen that as an alum too but being closely involved with it as a coach it’s great to see all of the opportunities that here for women student athletes now, that people were shooting for back in the 1980s or looking towards but wasn’t prevalent. I don’t think we had the same advantages so it’s just good to see how far we’ve come.
 What obstacles still stand to young women who want to participate in athletics?
A big concern seems to be that the grassroots opportunities are still not in a strong position in most of the areas in the United States, the opportunities at the middle school level or high school level. I just read things where they say the fields that the girls play on are just so much less well kept compared to the men’s. I feel like in the sport of swimming because it’s a pool there is often equal opportunity there but it seems like perhaps at the grass roots level we need continue to work to give the opportunities to young people, young women, to start their training to get all the ground rules down so that they can shoot for an Ivy spot or a Division-I scholarship spot. I feel like that’s probably where more work needs to be done as well as continuing at the collegiate level but I think we’ve made some good strides.
What has athletics done for young girls that choose to participate?
I think one of the biggest benefits that comes of it, is that you learn in an environment like this where you’re achieving high academically and you’re challenging yourself quite a bit athletically, that going forward in life you have a lot of advantages over folks who may have just been great academics. You learn under fire how to adapt and change and maneuver and make things work. At least for me personally that was something that I think I got out of my experience where I had a good strong mix of academics and athletics. I felt always prepared and I felt able to handle the stress. I felt I had been in a lot of those situations before even though it wasn’t necessarily in the workforce. It was trying to get papers done while I had to go to a big conference meet or whatever the case may be. I just think you have an advantage going forward in life and that you’ve really had to really balance a lot more than a large number of your peers have.
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