It seems odd to say that a diver already with a Mountain West gold medal and multiple event medals is poised for a breakout championship season, but it fits for Nevada's Bailey Heydra.

Heydra, a gold and bronze medalist on 1-Meter Springboard at the 2022 and 2023 Mountain West Swimming and Diving Championships, respectively, and a 2023 silver medalist on 3-Meter Springboard, took the 2023-24 collegiate season off to take on a greater challenge: competing internationally for South Africa and going for a berth at the 2024 Olympic Games.

After finishing 17th on 3-Meter Synchronized at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, Heydra took on the world's best on 1-Meter and 3-Meter in 2024. While she did not advance through the preliminary rounds, Heydra credits the experience as vital towards preparing herself to level up in her return to collegiate competition in 2024-25.

"Something that international competition has taught me is that I finally am confident that I belong up there with the best of the best," Heydra said. "When I competed at the [2023] world championships, it's a daunting feeling when you're up there with the best of the best and you just don't feel like you belong. And it takes a lot of time to gain that confidence."

Heydra's learning process from international competition continues to benefit from something Nevada Diving has long offered: the coaching of a world-renowned head coach in Jian Li You and assistant coach and 2020 Olympic bronze medalist Krysta Palmer.

"I have always looked up to Krysta a lot. Her dives are some of the most graceful and beautiful dives, and one of the things I'm learning and she's also trying to instill in me is technique and beauty," Heydra said. "She also inspires me a lot—when I was dealing with my injury I don't think I could have gotten through without her because she was one of those people who understood and gave me advice. It was a really hard time, and she was someone I could talk to and rely on."

"Jian Li just brings a completely unique perspective. Growing up in China, competing and training under that system—we all know the China's are the best among the rest of the world in diving, and that's for a reason. Hearing stories about how [Jian Li] grew up, trained, and people she's coached, it's inspiring hearing those things," Heydra continued. "But also, hearing how much she went through puts into perspective what you're going through at that point in time. She'll drop little pills of wisdom every once in awhile, while we're training, and it is like, you have to take every single dive and chase it like you're diving in a competition. If you don't train how you compete, then when you compete you're leaving things up to chance."

It's not just the coaching and advice from You and Palmer that helps push Heydra—competing and practicing alongside 2023 Mountain West Diver of the Year Lucia Gabino embodies the old adage "iron sharpens iron."

"Having strong teammates pushes you to do better, whether it's a practice or competition—you always have to hold your own," she said. "It sometimes can be tricky when you're in competition with your teammates, because sometimes you're best friends with them, you can support one another, but sometimes you're not. It creates this interesting dynamic, especially on such a small team. That's why I'm so grateful for the team this year, Madi [Simons] and Lu are some of my best friends and it's created this absolutely awesome training environment this season."

And what a return campaign it has been already for Heydra. The redshirt junior has finished atop the fields in every one of her diving competitions on 3-Meter in 2024-25, and all but one of her 1-Meter competitions—a runner-up finish at the USC Diving Invitational in November being the only blemish on her record.

Demonstrating that her performances are ramping up at the right time of season, Heydra's most recent 3-Meter score of 352.88 at the Jan. 17 dual meet against UNLV was her season best, and led to her second Mountain West Diver of the Week honor of the year.

"Taking that year last year to redshirt, I was also able to learn a bunch of new dives and actually hone it, which ups my degree of difficulty quite a lot," Heydra noted about the difference in her diving since her collegiate return. "When you're just competing and going and going, it's really hard to learn new dives so I think it gave me the time to find myself. One of the hard things of training maybe, like a lower degree of difficulty list compared to a teammate's in the past, is, you have to nail every single dive [at the international level], and if you don't you're not going to win. Once you've now got that degree of difficulty, you're that person that people are going off, and it's super cool to have that confidence of 'If I hit every dive, I've got this.'"

All of that has led up to a 2024-25 championship season which begins with Wednesday's 1-Meter Springboard competition at the University of Houston's CRWC Natatorium. With the Wolf Pack in a strong position to contend for its first Mountain West title since 2016, Heydra and the Nevada divers can write their own chapter in the program's storied diving history.