Diving
Favorite athlete: Michael Phelps
Favorite team: New England Patriots
Favorite memory competing in sports: When it came down to the end of close dual meets.
Most embarrassing thing that has happened while competing in sports: When I was diving synchro this past summer, I got a bad hurdle and ended up failing the diver. There were only three people in the event. We got last by like 70 points.
Music on iPod: Country, dance, hip hop
Future plans: I plan to have fun this summer with my friends, and then I plan to go to Georgia and have a blast enjoying college.
Motto: “There’s always someone better.”
Goal before turning 30: To have a steady job.
Things people don’t know about me: I swam in states as well. I enjoy playing tennis and ping pong.
Vince Lombardi correctly pointed out that adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.
While the former Green Bay Packers coach probably didn’t know too much about diving, his famous quote is right on target when it comes to William Tennent’s Ian Forlini.
Forlini’s character has been revealed over the past few seasons, as he has balanced diving, swimming and academics while dealing with his mother Lisa’s recurring breast cancer.
What could have torn him apart has actually shown his inner strength.
“I really just take each moment as it comes and focus on what I have to do at that time,” he said. “If it’s homework, then that’s what I do. If it’s practice, then that’s what I’m thinking about.
“I try to just separate everything and do the thing that I need to do and not think about anything else.”
While that is a good plan in theory, Forlini put it to the test often over his high school career.
His mother is the head swim coach and the diving coach at Tennent and always on the deck with him.
In other circumstances, it would not be very difficult to separate Lisa the coach from Lisa the parent, but Ian’s circumstances are different.
He was 12 when his mother was first diagnosed with Stage Two breast cancer five years ago.
She has had surgery and chemotherapy and radiation treatments. At one point, it appeared that she was doing well, but the cancer returned and brought with it more chemotherapy, more treatments.
Through it all, Ian has watched his mother struggle with the cancer while continuing to coach, not only at Tennent but also at Centennial Aquatics and Centennial Diving.
Every dive, every race, every lap, every practice, there she is; the woman who gave him life, fighting to hang onto her own.
Add to all of that the pressure of diving at the elite level.
Forlini entered this past season, his final at Tennent, as the three-time defending District One Class AAA and Suburban One League National Conference champion.
His name is on record boards at pools all over two counties, and at 16 he was the youngest participant at the 2012 US Olympic Diving Team Trials.
But he takes it all in stride.
At big competitions, there is typically a long layoff for a diver from one dive to the next, so divers get deep within themselves to stay focused, often using headphones to isolate themselves from the distractions on the deck and in the balcony as they wait for their next turn.
While everyone else spends their down time bouncing their heads to the beat or running through their next dive on the deck, Ian is fussing over his mother, making sure she’s comfortable and that she’s taken her medications and seeing to her drinks and snacks.
“For all those years when I was healthy, I took care of him,” Lisa said. “And then when I got sick - we just recently went to regionals at Rochester. He took such good care of me on top of his own diving.
“He amazes me that he can spend so much time practicing, competing and on top of it all worrying about how I’m doing and taking care of me. That’s just been so fulfilling in my life to spend the time with him.”
It has not impaired his ability to get the job done on the board.
This past season, he won the District One and SOL National titles for the fourth year in a row and also won the PIAA Class AAA championship with a meet-record score of 596.15 points.
The state title was the one prize that eluded him, and the high point of his high school career was when Lisa had the honor of hanging the gold medal on her son’s neck.
“That was the one thing I really wanted,” he said.
The University of Georgia is the next stop for Ian.
“He teases me all the time that he’s going to Georgia,” Lisa said. “That’s the closest ones of all the schools he looked at, and that’s the one I wanted him to choose for a lot of reasons, but one reason was is that it’s a school we can get to watch him compete sometimes and be able to be down there and see him.”
Close also for him to come home on weekends.
“The coaches at Georgia are aware of the situation with my mother, so I can come home anytime,” he said. "I'm very excited about Georgia and I can't wait to get there and start training fulltime and just begin the next part of my career and my life."
Ian is from a family of swimmers. He is the child of two former standouts; Lisa swam for Tennent and father Jamie, the assistant coach at Tennent, swam for Upper Moreland and later for Ursinus.
Older sister Meghan swam at La Salle and older brother Connor is currently swimming at West Chester.
As a youngster, Ian was torn between swimming and diving.
“My mother told me that I had to choose and I chose diving,” he said.
That brought with it some challenges for the Forlinis, who didn’t really have a background in diving.
“For me, it was never about – he has to be a swimmer because we’re swim coaches. It was – if this is what he loves,” Lisa said.
“I remember when Ian was about eight, Jamie came to me and said– we need to look around and see what else is out there because we can’t meet his talent level. It was more for him than for us.
“This has always been about him. Before we started Centennial Diving, our US program here, where we have our wonderful coach Steve Kuttruff, who is his club coach, we would drive out to West Chester. Steve was an assistant out there, and we would go out there when he was in elementary school.
“I would pick him up after school, he would have a snack, do his homework in the car and we’d drive along – I’ve gotten so much more out of this than diving with him. We’ve had such a great relationship.
“Just being able to talk to him and experience how he feels and what he’s doing and what his day has been like – just sharing his life with him over the hour-long drives back and forth to so many different places. The different trips we’ve taken over the years have just been so fulfilling to me because I get to be with him.”
Ian’s swimming roots still show.
In the past he swam the breaststroke because the team needed it.
This past season he filled in at sprint freestyle and did the occasional backstroke but more importantly, he was on all three relays at the District One meet.
“Our goal was to get a relay to states and we did it,” he said. "It was so great."
He anchored the 200 freestyle relay for Brennen Bastian, Tom Del Conte and Matt Patrick. The foursome finished 15th at states.
“His goal at the beginning of this year was to get his relay to states,” Jamie said. “He wanted to be part of it, and he wanted to get his kids there with him. He just kept reminding them once or twice a week, ‘Come on guys, we need to be prepared. We need to work to get our exchanges clean and get the mindset that we’re making it.’
“I think that’s one of his other major attributes that he is so mentally tough that he’s in tune with what needs to be done.”
He has always been mature beyond his years.
“He was a child – when he was nine or 10, I would say, ‘Why did the judge give you that score?’ He would say, ‘I did this, this and this wrong. I deserved it’ and he truly meant it,” Lisa said.
Jamie agreed.
“He’s very self-critical,” Jamie said. “He’ll get out of a meet and say, ‘The meet was good, but this dive could have been better. I know what I need to do.’
Jamie also credits his wife.
“She’s been really good with him through the years of just teaching him not to get stressed out about scores, that the score’s not important,” he said. It’s more like how did you do it, are you pleased with how you did it and are you doing what the coach asked you to do.”
Said Lisa, “I just follow his lead.”
