FOR THE RECORD: NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1959 (one meter); AAU NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1961 (3 meter); OLYMPIC COACH: 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988; Assistant Coach: 1968; WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS COACH: 1975, 1978, 1982, 1986; PAN AMERICAN COACH: 1967, 1975, 1983, 1987; WORLD CUP COACH: 1981, 1983, 1985, 1987; 1974 Malone Memorial Award; 1976 Fred Cady Award; 1979-1987 Mike Peppe Award; 1984 Ohio State University Sports Hall of Fame; Winner of 62 National Team Championships while coaching at University of Minnesota (1962-1963); Ohio State (1963-1978), Mission Viejo (1978-1985) and Mission Bay (beginning 1985-1988).
Ron O’Brien has done it all in diving from NCAA and AAU national champion under Mike Peppe while a six letter man (gymnastics and diving) at Ohio State to the top professional water show act (with Hall of Famer Dick Kimball), to the Ph.D. that made believers out of the academicians, to a top college, club, national and international coach. He has won U.S. Diving’s Award as the “Outstanding Senior U.S. Diving Coach” every year since the award was inaugurated in 1979.
It seems like Ron O’Brien has always been a diving coach. Standing next to the deep end (now a diving well), speaking in sort of a stage whisper, animated by body language and hand signals of what the diver did or did not do. His face is constantly sunburned–his green eyes bloodshot with crinkle smile lines around his mouth. His ears and nose peeling as he does a dance in place, teetering on the edge of the pool.
In his first 25 years of coaching, his divers have won 154 gold, 90 silver and 78 bronze medals in major Olympic, world, national, NCAA and Big Ten Conference diving championships. This doesn’t take into account the dozens of medals in prestigious invitational meets around the world. He has coached everyone from beginners to the famed Greg Louganis.
Ron narrowly missed the 1960 Olympic team himself placing third or fourth in the Olympic trials where only two were taken. Perhaps this experience gave him the patience, persistence and understanding to be the coach of every Olympic team since 1968. “It certainly was a good motivator,” he says. “It made me want to make it as a coach. But what keeps me going is not winning,” O’Brien says, “but the quest for reaching potential in myself as a coach and my kids as divers. It’s the pursuit of excellence.”
If you had to pick a highlight from his first 25 years of coaching at Minnesota, Ohio State and the two Missions, it might be the 1982 World Championships when O’Brien’s divers from Mission Viejo won all four of the diving gold medals, the first and only time this has happened in diving history.
Dr. Ron O’Brien Obituary (March 14, 1938 – November 19, 2024)
The Sport of Diving loses a Legend: Dr. Ron O’Brien dies at age 86 at home in Naples, Florida
Dr. Ron O’Brien, a legend in the sport of diving has died at the age of 86. As a Coach, no one can compare to the resume O’Brien created in the sport of diving. He was an eight-time USA Olympic Diving Coach, seven-time Head Coach, beginning in 1968, continuing through every Olympiad until his last in 1996. He was a seven-time USA World Championship Head Coach, four-time USA Pan American Games Head Coach and seven-time USA World Cup Head Coach. O’Brien has coached more Olympians than we can count, winning five gold, three silver and four bronze, but will probably be best remembered for the 1988 Olympic Games, when he coached Greg Louganis to his second double gold medal performance in the 3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform events, making Louganis the only man to accomplish back-to-back double gold medals in Olympic diving history. All totaled in major competitions, O’Brien divers have won 196 gold, 113 silver and 106 bronze medals.
His coaching career began after a brief stint at Minnesota ~ O’Brien was then named the Head Diving Coach at his alma mater, the Ohio State University where he coached from 1963-1978. He eventually moved to Southern California in 1978, where he became Head Coach of the Mission Viejo Nadadores. It was in Mission Viejo that O’Brien won an astounding 38 Team Titles, and in 1984 the United States swept all four gold medals at the World Championships, the only time this has ever been accomplished and the first time any country has swept a major international world class event since 1952. The divers were all coached by O’Brien.
His Olympic medalists include: Jennifer Chandler (1976), Debbie Keplar Wilson (1976), Greg Louganis (1984, 1988), Michelle Mitchell(1984, 1988), Wendy Wyland (1984), Scott Donie (1992) and Mary Ellen Clark (1992, 1996).
In 1985, O’Brien headed to South Florida to coach at a brand new facility called Mission Bay in Boca Raton, where he stayed until 1990. He hit the ground running; the very next year in 1986, all 12 United States Diving individual National Titles were won by Ron O’Brien divers. O’Brien won 16 Team Titles while at Mission Bay and was soon inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) as an Honor Coach in 1988.
In 1990, The City of Fort Lauderdale, home to ISHOF, hired O’Brien as the Director of Diving and Head Diving Coach at the Hall of Fame Aquatic Complex. There, O’Brien won 20 Team Titles in all, and a majority his athletes competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games, with O’Brien serving as Head Coach. Pat Jeffrey, Karen LaFace, Kent Ferguson, Scott Donie, Jenny Keim, Mary Ellen Clark, and David Pichler were all members of the Fort Lauderdale Diving Team.
In addition to coaching Olympians in Fort Lauderdale, O’Brien served as the National Technical Director for USA Diving from 1991-2004.
After the 1996 Olympic Games, O’Brien retired from actively coaching on deck. In 1996, He was named Diving Special Events Coordinator at the Hall of Fame Aquatics Complex for the City of Fort Lauderdale, where he remained until 2008. He was named High Performance Director for USA Diving in 2004, where he served for the next four years. Once retired, he created and operated “Divers to College”, an online college recruiting website, exclusively for divers and diving. He was always looking to help the “diver”.
Ron O’Brien produced a United States National Champion in 25 of his 30 years as a coach and had a National Champion for 24 consecutive years, from 1973 through his very last year in 1996. Awards started almost immediately in his career. In 1974, O’Brien was presented the Mike Malone Award, given for outstanding contributions to United States Diving. In 1976, O’Brien was given the Fred Cady Award for coaching an Olympic Champion and the James A. Rhodes Award for participation in the 1976 Olympic Games. He was awarded the Mike Peppe Memorial Award, an unprecedented 14 times, first in 1979, and the last time was his final year of coaching, in 1996. In 1993, he was given the WHOSAM Award, which is given for commitment to excellence and dedication in the sport of Diving. In 1996, he won the United States Olympic Committee’s Diving Coach of the Year, as well as the Phil Boggs Award, given for outstanding contributions to United States Diving.
In addition to ISHOF in 1988, O’Brien was inducted into The Ohio State University Hall of Fame in 1984; he was a 1996 Inductee into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame; in 2004, he was inducted into the Broward County Sports Hall of Fame. Most recently, O’Brien was inducted as part of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame Class of 2019 as an Honor Coach, one of only six coaches to ever be inducted.
On May 23, 2015, the city of Fort Lauderdale inducted Dr. Ron O’Brien with a star embedded on Fort Lauderdale Beach on the City’s Walk of Fame as part of its sixth annual Great American Beach Party celebration. The City followed up on January 7, 2020 by proclaiming it Ron O’Brien Day in the City of Fort Lauderdale.
O’Brien was born in Pittsburgh, PA, on March 14, 1938. He became interested in diving and gymnastics at the Pittsburgh YMCA, where he began his athletic career. He went on to attend college at the Ohio State University, earning six varsity letters in both diving and gymnastics. He became the NCAA National Champion on the 1-meter in 1959, NCAA All-American on both the 1- and 3-meter in 1957, 1958, 1959, and the AAU National Champion on the 3-meter in 1961. In 1960, at the U.S. Diving Olympic Trials, O’Brien placed third, missing making the Olympic Team by one place. Not making the team, sent him into coaching, and created a coaching legend that may never be replicated. On May 20, 2010, Ohio State University named their diving well, the Ron O’Brien Dive Well, in his honor.
Dr. Ron O’Brien leaves behind his wife of over 60 years, Mary Jane, daughter Anne, son Tim, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.