File Photo/Nevada Sagebrush. Diving coach Jian Li You poses with diver Sharae Zheng after a successful swiming and diving championship run in 2016. You will be one of nine diving coaches traveling with Team USA for the 2020 Olympics.

Nevada head diving coach Jian Li You  was recently selected to the U.S. Olympic Diving Team coaching staff for the 2020 Olympic Games, USA Diving announced on Monday, June 21. The diving competition at the XXXII Olympic Games runs from July 25 to Aug. 7 at the Tokyo Aquatics Center. 

“I’d like to thank our department here at the University of Nevada,” You said in a news release. “Everybody has been so supportive of us and has given us the time and resources needed. I’d also like to thank our head coach, Brendon Bray. He is a huge part of our success. Krysta had an amazing performance at the U.S. Olympic Trials. To do what she did in three rounds and also two different events is incredible. Her and I have achieved our goals, so there’s less pressure heading into the Olympics.”

You is one of nine coaches who will travel with the U.S. Olympic Diving Team. Nevada will have two representatives on Team USA with You on the coaching staff and Krysta Palmer competing in the 3-meter and 3-meter synchro. Indiana head diving coach Drew Johansen and Texas head diving coach Matt Scoggin will serve as head and assistant coaches for Team USA, respectively.

You will be entering her 26th season at Nevada as a five-time Mountain West Diving Coach of the Year. A former Chinese national champion diver and coach to numerous Olympians, she has established Nevada as one of the premier diving schools in the region.

“To have Jian Li with me at the Olympics is so exciting,” Palmer said in a news release. “She put so much effort into making my dream a reality and to have her there to experience it with me will be so special and memorable. We are a team and achieved this dream together.”

You  worked with both Chinese and American Olympians in prior Olympics. She tutored the likes of Olympic Gold Medalist Fu Mingxia, Tan Luengdai, Su Suwi, Lon Wei and Americans Becky Ruehl, Mary Ellen Clark, Scott Donie and Dave Pichler. Her divers have been instrumental in the Wolf Pack winning three consecutive Western Athletic Conference titles. She immigrated to the United States in September of 1995, moving to Florida and then to Cincinnati to prepare Becky Ruehl and other U.S. National team members for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

You graduated from the Shanghai Sports University in Shanghai, China. As a diver, she was on the Chinese National Champion in the 1-meter and 3-meter springboard and the platform for five years from 1976-1980. She was named to the 1980 China Olympic team. During that span, she was ranked No. 1 in the world on the one-meter board.

You has been instrumental at Nevada over her 25-year career. Her addition to the Olympic Games is just one of the dozens awards and accolades she has garnered with the Wolf Pack. 

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are set to begin on July 23.

Isaiah Burrows can be reached at iburrows@sagebrush.unr.edu or on Twitter @IsaiahBurrows_.