DOVER – It’s nice to be wanted. In a little more than a year Dover native Jessica Parratto went from self-imposed retirement to another shot at Olympic glory.
Parratto and partner Delaney Schnell won the women’s 10-meter platform synchronized diving competition at the US Olympic Trials in Knoxville, Tenn., on Tuesday night by a wide margin to qualify for the Paris Games that open in late July.
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It will be Parratto’s third trip to the Olympics.
“It still is unreal,” she said during a post-competition interview. “I mean I’m still kind of in shock honestly. Just making an Olympic team I think for the second, third (time) or whatever, the feeling never gets old.”
Parratto and Schnell finished with a score of 607.14 points to 494.13 for the runner-up tandem of Gabrielle Filzen and Bailey Sturgill. Parratto and Schnell took silver three years ago in Tokyo, the first time the Americans had ever medaled in the event.
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Schnell is also the person who coaxed Parratto out of retirement.
“I’m just real excited,” Parratto said. “I never thought I’d be here and going to another Olympics. I have this one to thank for sure for pulling me out of retirement.”
Schnell idolized Parratto who is a team captain.
“When I was a young diver Jessica was one of the divers I looked up to,” Schnell said. “She was one of the older girls. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be up there on 10-meter. It’s really cool to win my first silver medal with her in my first Olympics with her and now this next Olympics with her.”
There will be one big difference this year as opposed to three years ago in Japan where there were no fans in the stands because of the pandemic.
“I’m going to lean a lot on Jess a lot because she was in 2016 with fans in the stands,” Schnell said, “so it’s going to be something new for me and I’m looking forward to it.”
Despite all of her experience, Parratto was still somewhat emotional following Tuesday night’s competition.
“Just a lot of years of hard work,” she said. “It’s really just for my friends, my family and my coaches and all the people that have supported me through the years. It doesn’t happen without all of them.”
Parratto also competed in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, qualifying in both the synchronized and the individual 10-meter platform diving, finishing 10th in the individual event and seventh in the synchronized event. Five years later she had a breakthrough performance after the 2020 Games were postponed because of the pandemic.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Dover native Jessica Parratto qualifies for third Olympics Games
