MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia men’s and women’s swimming and diving coach Vic Riggs announced the addition of Karla Helder as the program’s head diving coach Thursday.
Helder arrives in Morgantown after serving as the diving coach at San Jose State from 2018-20. While coaching at SJSU, Helder led every diver to personal-best scores on 1-meter and 3-meter springboard. During this time, she also served as the assistant diving coach and development coach for the Santa Clara Diving Club, where she facilitated meet management, diver progress reports, recruiting videos and parent communication.
“As I started the process of hiring a new coach to lead our diving program, Karla’s knowledge, experience and dedication to the sport of diving, as well as her holistic approach to coaching student-athletes, are what impressed me the most about her in our conversations,” Riggs said. “Not only do I believe Karla will challenge our divers to make them the best they can be on the boards, but her approach to mentoring her student-athletes is going to help prepare them for all aspects of their future endeavors. I’m excited to see how our diving program grows under Karla’s tutelage.”
Prior to her time with the Spartans, Helder spent 12 seasons as the diving coach at Buffalo, where she was instrumental in developing a strong diving program that featured school records for both the men’s and women’s teams. While at Buffalo, she coached an Eastern College Athletics Conference (ECAC) men’s individual champion and two All-Mid-American Conference divers, including 13 regional qualifiers.
