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Courtesy of Chapman Athletics--
From parkour to diving, Jake Randazzo has flipped his way through life from a young age. Break dancing led Randazzo into parkour and parkour led into diving. Diving has resulted in multiple championships won and hopefully more to come as he heads into his senior year.
He began break dancing at the age of six and then attended a parkour camp at 11. He continued parkour through middle school and into high school but wanted to play a high school sport. Diving became the obvious answer as he had plenty of experience flipping his body through the air.
“In middle school, I played basketball and volleyball,” Randazzo recalled. “I was terrible at both sports but in basketball, my dad had a play where I would just start flipping down the sideline as a distraction. Then, one of my friends would just go score a basket and it worked twice!”
So, flipping was the spark and he has taken that spark to excel in both the parkour and diving world. In diving, he was named the 2024 SCIAC Diver of the Year after winning the title on the 3-meter and placing second on the 1-meter.
Last season, he won the 1-meter and took second in the 3-meter. He’s accomplished all this with an All-American classmate in Reid Omilian, who didn’t compete at last year’s SCIAC Championships but has three All-American finishes at the NCAA Championships.
The two are training hard for another successful season to close out successful careers. With a very talented freshman joining the mix, Jake stated his goal was just to keep up with his new young teammate. When asked if a podium sweep was in the future, “It could happen…But we’ll just see when we get there. We’ve got awhile until SCIACs.”
After his diving career comes to a close this spring, Randazzo will throw himself back into training harder for parkour. He is already an accomplished athlete in parkour, finishing fifth in the Sport Parkour League World Championships.
Randazzo also recently released a solo project entitled “Soak It In” that can be viewed on YouTube. Check out Randazzo’s parkour video below or find him trying to win a third SCIAC title on top of the diving boards at ELAC in February.
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