Watch Out for Jordan Rzepka

Watch out for Jordan Rzepka.

The 22-year-old is ready to compete at his third World Championships.

His preparation has been somewhat different this time around.

With a new hobby and a new perspective, Rzepka has incorporated more mental training into his preparation.

“There becomes a certain point in your career where your dives are your dives. You can work on little things to get better, but the hardest part of diving is the competition. I’ve struggled with that a lot,” Rzepka said. “This last year I’ve been just focusing on the mental side, meeting with Karen Cogan, our sports psychologist and just doing little things. I do more outside the pool than I do in the pool now and it’s working.”

After finishing ninth on 10-meter at the 2023 Pan American Games and seventh at the Winter National Championships that same year, Rzepka placed fifth at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials last year. Since then, he's earned silver medals on 10-meter at the 2024 USA Diving Winter National Championships and most recently the 2025 USA Diving National Championships, where he qualified for the World Championships for the third time.

Rzepka will dive individually on 10-meter after competing 1-meter at the 2022 World Championships and synchronized 10-meter and the mixed team event in 2023.

The recent Purdue University graduate has his eyes on the LA 2028 Olympic Games and plans to stay in West Lafayette for three more years. He’s looking for work to occupy his time away from training.

“Training is the priority right now, and things are going well. I just want to keep taking it week by week, getting better little by little and hopefully come 2028, I have something that’s beautiful,” Rzepka said.

“In the meantime, I’m trying to find a job that can work with the schedule of training. It’s a very demanding schedule, and it is full-time,” Rzepka said. “With my degree in sales, I’m trying to find something that I can do to work from home and have some money coming in for these next few years. I don’t want to be sitting around doing nothing.”

He has found at least one thing to occupy his time away from training.  While he continues to hone his craft in the pool, he’s picked up another craft away from the water – art.

About a year ago, Rzepka starting painting pottery – plates, specifically. He paints them to look like watches.

“My dad, my sister and I, we love watches. I’ll paint watches on the plate. I have around 15 of them now. Over the course of the last year, they’ve gotten really intricate. I give them all to my dad as gifts,” Rzepka said.

“There’s a place at Purdue that I go. It gives me something to do after training and really focus on and spend hours on,” Rzepka added. “I take the stuff home with me. I’ll take the plate home, take the paint home. I genuinely love this. They take anywhere from 10 to 15 hours to finish.”