The hiring of New Swimming and Diving coach Brandon Peifer is one of Pace Athletics many new hires this year. With a background in problem solving, he now takes on the puzzle that is the diving section.

The season is currently underway and thus far the women’s team has achieved a record of 3-2, while the men’s team has struggled at 1-3. Peifer comes to a team that had no diving coach for the first six weeks of the season which Peifer considers to be the big flaw.

“I’ve been working really hard, I got everyone on the team to have six dives on one-meter for this upcoming meet and the next challenge is to get them six dives on three-meter to be able to compete both boards,” Peifer said.

Peifer brings a different approach to the Pace waters with his background in science and math. Currently Peifer is working towards a Master’s degree in electrical engineering at New York University, saying that if any Rubik’s cube is put in front of him, he will solve it.

There is one particular project that Peifer worked on that relates back to diving, and could be a glimpse at some of Peifer’s possible methods for the team.

“The whole project was based on figuring out how far the board would bend based on the force applied at the end of it,” said Peifer, who graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a Bachelor’s degree in physics and a minor in math. “After that, I went on and still had quite a bit of video that I chewed through and I found out the correlation between the forces applied at the end of it and the period of the oscillation of the board, which really helps with front and back approaches in diving allowing for divers to get higher based on where they place the fulcrum.”

Peifer is not only bringing physics to the table, but also some history, having worked with head coach Dan Allen before. Both coaches can trace their roots back to Geneseo with paths crossing when Allen spent time as coach at Buffalo State, a school Geneseo had meets against during Peifer’s diving days.

“I’ve known [Allen] all four years that I was diving,” Peifer said.

A native New Yorker from Monroe, Peifer’s love of diving goes back to his middle school days, with Peifer later joining the swimming and diving team at Monroe Woodbury High School. During his time at Geneseo, Peifer was a three-time qualifier in the diving one-meter and three-meter events. But Peifer’s proudest accomplishment is his conference record in diving.

“Having the conference record was pretty cool,” Peifer said. “You hear about all these guys that went through the SUNYAC system that were just incredible. It was the best meet I ever had, everyone on my team did very well and all the coaches were like, ‘I can’t believe that [Peifer’s coach] had a team like that’.”

Peifer has hit the ground running with the team taking on Roger Williams University and Fairfield University during the coach’s first two weeks at Pace.