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By Keiran Gorsky
Ottawa’s Ella Lindsay continued her standout season last week, winning a medal of every colour at the 2025 Speedo Junior Elite National Diving Championships in Edmonton from July 17-20. It was the 15-year-old’s fourth time at the annual nationals, but her first jump up to the under-18 category.
“It was a lot of fun for me,” Lindsay says. “I’m really happy with how I did overall.”
Lindsay won a gold medal in platform, a silver on the three-metre springboard and bronze in the mixed team event alongside three divers from Quebec’s Pointe-Claire Swim Club in Sam McCaffrey, Mackenzie Van Houtte-Cachero and Miles Nadeau.
She had expected to perform best in platform, but she pinpoints that team event, a series of jumps culminating with a synchronized dive, as particularly enjoyable. It was the first time it had been included at junior nationals.
“Synchro is as much focusing on your own dive as it is diving with another person,” Lindsay explains. “The most important part is to find a good balance between the two partners.”
In preparation for these competitions, Lindsay practices a variety of exercises with her coach Fernando Henderson, often far away from any swimming pool.
“Diving is a lot more than just water training,” she seems almost to recite.
Henderson highlights that Lindsay’s proficiency in “dryland” exercises has served as a crucial building block in preparation for major competitions. They don’t have access to all the specialized equipment in Ottawa that’s she’s able to use elsewhere at training camps. But in their place, Lindsay often uses “dry boards,” hanging over a large mat splayed out on the ground. It’s a gradual gleaning of fundamentals, Lindsay explains, until she’s mastered every aspect of a specific dive.
Those junior national medals at made for three more additions to a considerably crowded hanger in 2025. She repeated as a medallist for Team Canada at the Dresden International Youth Diving Meet in Germany.
And then five golds at the Dive Ontario Summer Provincials earlier this year bought her a spot in Saskatoon for the Summer Senior National Championships in May, where she competed alongside Olympian, mentor and fellow Nepean-Ottawa Diving Club product Kate Miller for the first time.
“It was super thrilling to be honest to see how well she performs under pressure,” Lindsay says of Miller. “I’m really glad I got that experience.”
Lindsay admits her expectations weren’t terribly high, being a good deal younger than most of her competition. To her own surprise, she advanced to the finals in two separate events, finishing as high as fourth place in the 10 m platform dive, three spots behind the victor, Miller.
It was the perfect prelude to her senior international debut at the Canada Cup of Diving in Gatineau at the beginning of June, where she participated in a synchro event alongside another mentor figure in Mathilde Laberge.
“She is the most lovely girl, the best friend and an amazing synchro partner in Gatineau,” Lindsay underlines. “She’s definitely someone I look up to in diving but also as a person.”
Representing Canada together, they finished third in women’s open platform synchro with 254.52 points. Incidentally, Laberge was the one to beat out Lindsay for the gold in 3 m at this year’s junior nationals, and she was second to Lindsay on platform.
Diving is something of a tighter knit community than in other sports, Lindsay notes, but with a growing docket of international events, it’s been impossible not to meet a few new faces beyond her local network. Competing with athletes who almost exclusively edge her out in life experience at this point in her career, Lindsay can’t help but admire their capacity to tune out the noise.
“Being around a lot of different divers really helped me learn to stay more focused,” she describes. “To be able to focus away from the cameras and the pressure and try and perform.”
Lindsay still has another major national event ahead in her big season. She’ll be representing Ontario at the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland. The diving competition runs from Aug. 19-24.
A pair of athletes from the Ottawa National Diving Club also made it to event finals in their U15 categories at the junior nationals. Olivier Caron was sixth in the 3 m and 10th on 1 m in boys’ events, while Julia Read was seventh in the girls’ platform.