West Virginia University Athletics

Karla Helder spent four seasons as the head diving coach of the West Virginia University swimming and diving team.

In the 2022-23 season, Helder had five divers qualify for the NCAA Zone A Diving Championships: Glenn Eloriaga, Sarah Krusinski, Abigail Sullivan, Owen Johns and Marian Tiemeier.

During Helder’s second year with WVU, she had seven divers qualify for the 2021 NCAA Zone A Diving Championships – seniors Camille Burt, PJ Lenz and Nick Cover, juniors Marian Tiemeier and Owen Johns, and freshmen Sarah Krusinski and Glenn Eloriaga. Lenz’ second-consecutive NCAA Championships bid highlighted the 2021-22 campaign.
 
At the 2022 Big 12 Swimming & Diving Championships, WVU had two divers earn All-Big 12 First Team Honors, while six earned second team recognition. Lenz took him silver on men’s platform and went on to finish second at Zones.
 
Out of the diving well, Helder continued to lead her team to success inside the classroom. Two senior divers, Lenz and Burt, were named as 2022 Dr. Gerald Lage Academic Achievement Recipients.

Helder led the Mountaineers to success during her first year at WVU. Four divers qualified for the 2021 NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships, this marked the first time in program history that multiple divers competed at a single championship. Jacob Cardinal Tremblay made his second consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships, while Jake Lowe (Sr.), Owen Johns (So.) and PJ Lenz (Jr.) qualified for their first time.
 
Eight Mountaineer divers qualified for the 2021 NCAA Zone A Diving Championships: Camille Burt, Jacob Cardinal Tremblay, Holly Darling, Owen Johns, PJ Lenz, Emma Longley, Jake Lowe and Marian Tiemer.
 
West Virginia broke five program records during the 2021 campaign, four of which were a part of Helder’s diving team. PJ Lenz earned a pair of records during his 2021 campaign, scoring a 377.00 on men’s platform at the Big 12 Championships and a 398.98 on 3-meter to open the season at Pitt. Freshman, Sara Haggerty, earned a spot in the record books on women’s platform notching a score of 269.33.
 
Academically, the Mountaineers were also a success. Both squads were named to the CSCAA Scholar All-America Teams during the 2020-21 season. Forty student-athletes were named to the 2021 Academic All-Big 12 Swimming & Diving teams; six divers were named to first team and two were recognized on second team.

Helder arrived in Morgantown in August 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.

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 UB, she coached an Eastern College Athletics Conference (ECAC) men’s individual champion and two All-Mid-American Conference divers, including 13 regional qualifiers.

Helder coached a pair of Bulls to qualify for the NCAA championships for the first time in the program’s history and led the school’s only diver to compete at the Olympic Trials.

A two-time NCAA Division II National Diving Coach of the Year, Helder also spent nine seasons at the University of California at Davis, where she coached four national champions and 36 All-Americans. She was named the Pacific Collegiate Swimming and Diving Conference (PCSC) Men’s Diving Coach of the Year in 2000 and 2003, while also earning the conference’s 2001 Women’s Diving Coach of the Year award.

Helder also has earned quite a few national and world diving titles herself, most recently at the 2008 U.S. Master’s Nationals, where she won her age group events, setting two new American records in the process, breaking her own records set in 2004. In May 2008, she traveled to Perth, Australia, for the World Master’s Diving Championships, where she won a pair of gold medals and broke both the 1-meter and 3-meter world records in her age group (50-54).

A graduate of California State University, Chico, Helder earned a Bachelor of Arts in physical education with a minor is psychology in 1982.  During her college career, she was an NCAA Division I All-American and Academic All-American status, a two-time Division II individual national champion and a member of a Division II national championship team under coach Pete Accardy at CSU Northbridge.

Following her successful college career, the Suisun, California, native was inducted into the Chico State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998.