While ElliReese Niday may be absent from the 2026 Junior World Championships this summer (healing a broken vertebra), she is an emerging force in American diving. The home-schooled teenager from Moultrie, Georgia, is also the epitome of southern charm.

When asked how she decided to switch from gymnastics to diving at age 9, she said that on a few tricks, like a roundoff back handspring backflip, “I would land on my head, and I was like, ‘Well, it’d be nice if there was some water under me’” to reduce the impact.

Diving was the perfect fit.

“I just loved it ever since I was a little girl,” said the 14-year-old.

A year later, Niday swept all three gold medals at the US Junior National Championships (in the 11-and-under age group). The next year, she won triple gold again on 1m, 3m and platform.

Then came the stunner. At the 2025 US Senior National Championships in Auburn, Alabama, Niday won the women’s 10m platform event – just three months after her 13^th birthday.

She became one of the youngest divers in US history to win a senior national diving title. 

Her goal, she said, “was honestly just to final” because it was only her second competition on 10m.

Ordinarily, the victory would have earned her a berth at the 2025 World Championships in Singapore, but competitors had to turn 14 by December 31.

Instead, Niday competed at US Junior Nationals and, once again, won on every board in her age group.

Then, in May 2026, in just her fifth year of diving full-time, Niday made the World Aquatics Diving World Cup team, placed fifth in Montreal on 10m, and not only qualified for the World Cup Super Final in China, but then, in Beijing, she advanced through the knockout rounds to place fourth on platform (beating Olympian Ellie Cole of Australia in their head-to-head match, and eliminating World Championship medallist Rin Kaneto of Japan in the semi-final). 

Again, the diving world took notice.

The very beginning

Niday’s mother, Lauryn (née McCalley) Niday was also a young and talented diver. When Lauryn was 13, she too swept the US Junior National Championship titles on all three boards. Later, she competed for the University of Tennessee, won five senior US titles, and was enshrined in Tennessee’s athletics hall of fame. She married Mark Niday (a fellow student at pharmacy school), opened a drugstore in Moultrie, and when the Nidays started a family, it was clear (even in utero) that ElliReese would be active. She was constantly doing somersaults.

“Every time they’d ultrasound me, I almost had to drink a glass of cold water to stun her to stop flipping,” Lauryn said. One technician predicted she’d be a gymnast. “I just giggled.”

But the tech was right. “Her motor skills were unbelievable,” Lauryn said. “She could swim the whole length of my mom’s pool before she walked.” And once she started diving, at 9, “Her love for it was obsessive,” she added. “She wanted to flip all the time.”

The first time ElliReese started working with two-time US Olympic coach John Proctor, the 11-year-old went down to meet him at Florida State University, about an hour away from her home in Georgia.

“I put her on a trampoline, just doing dryland stuff,” Proctor recalled, and “within about an hour, she could do everything that all my college kids could do.

“Anything I said, she processed almost instantaneously and did it,” said Proctor, 53. “I’ve been doing this my whole adult life and I’ve never seen anybody with that much innate knowledge for this particular game.”

When Niday won her first senior nationals, in May 2025, in Auburn, Alabama, she won every round, but it wasn’t a runaway victory. She missed her second dive in the final. She had to hit her last dive, and when her armstand back double with 1½ twists scored 8.5s and 9s, her mom said, “I almost fell in the pool! It was the craziest thing! A miracle! Unbelievable! I was like, ‘ElliReese, turn around. Let me take a quick pic,’ and there were tears just streaming down her face. It was so precious, so sweet. I will never forget that day.”

Coach Proctor said he was even more impressed when Niday won the 2025 US Winter Nationals that December in Midland, Texas. She finished 105 points ahead of the runner-up and was just one point shy of tying the NCAA (collegiate) record at the time.

“I’ve never seen anybody that loves diving like this kid does,” Proctor said. “I mean, you can’t wipe the smile off this kid’s face with a frying pan – unless she’s hurt.”

Niday had broken both wrists in the past but the 2026 back injury surprised even the spine surgeon she saw in Atlanta.

The T-4 vertebra

About three days before Niday flew to China for the 2026 Super Final, she told her mom she had “sort of a knot” in her back.

After therapy and treatment – and her Junior World Championship berth already secured in 10m – she flew straight from Beijing to a USA Diving event in Florida to try to qualify for the 3m event. When she finally got home, MRI and CT scans showed that part of her T-4 (thoracic) vertebra, called the transverse process, had broken off. It’s right between the shoulder blades.

“She dove in China and Coral Springs with a broken back,” Lauryn said. “The head spinal physician said, ‘I’ve never seen someone do this.’ That vertebra is doesn’t usually do a lot of moving.” Because Niday is so strong, the hypothesis is that the weak point is her growth plates, and that’s where it snapped off.

The hope was that it would heal in about six weeks. Until then, no diving.

At first, Lauryn said, “She was bummed, but she’s been great. She’s like, ‘Mom! I’ve never had a summer before in my life.’ The other day, I was like, ‘Go lay out by the pool. Get some sun!’ And she’s like, ‘I’ve never done this before! It was weird, but I like it. It’s fun!’”

By early July, ElliReese was still hoping to get back to diving, her true love. But by mid-month, however, it was clear that she was out of time.

So her Junior World Championship debut will have to wait. Niday will still be eligible for the 2028 edition – and, in between, she’ll start ninth grade, get the braces off her teeth, hang out a bit with her younger brother, Mark Carlson Niday, start training for more World Cup events and – finally, hopefully – qualify for another senior World Championships team like she did at 13 when she was too young to compete.

“I just love to represent the USA,” Niday said. “I think it might be my favourite thing at meets and competitions.” That, and “the exhilaration of falling through the air off 10 meters, especially my back armstand double with one-and-a-half twists. I love to be upside down.”