A leap into the unknown

Standing on a platform 65 to 70 feet above a dark body of water and peering at the surface below is cause for muscles to become gripped with paralysis, a heart to start jackhammering against a ribcage, and a mind to become devoured by fear.

And yet Kaylea Arnett ’16 simply does a little dance, lines herself up, and casually jumps, contorting her body into an array of flips and twists before landing feet first in the water.

“I'm just up there cool as cucumber,” she said.

Arnett dove headfirst into this latest adventure, as the former Virginia Tech All-American diver and recent Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame inductee now competes on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series tour, a series of cliff diving events held around the globe in which competitors vie for the overall title.

That Arnett, a four-time Atlantic Coast Conference Most Valuable Women’s Diver, catapults herself these days from 70 feet above water comes as no surprise. The 32-year-old used to compete in the rodeo and taught herself to ride a unicycle as a kid while growing up rural Texas before her family move to southern Oklahoma to live in the Chickasaw Nation to be closer to her late mother’s native Indigenous family.

Arnett herself admits being a bit of a free spirit with an eclectic array of interests. Her career plan wasn’t necessarily to become a cliff diver. Truthfully, she didn’t have a plan.

“I’m not much of a planner,” Arnett admitted.

After her decorated career at Virginia Tech and graduating with a degree in philosophy in College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and a minor in Japanese – a unique combination – Arnett wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She only knew that she wanted to continue diving.

Then an opportunity arose – in China.

“There was this big show in Macau, China called The House of Dancing Water,” Arnett said. “I put together a little demo reel of all my dives and sent it out, and they picked me up immediately. Actually, I walked the stage [at graduation] and then flew to China the next day, so it was a rapid transition for me.

“I went straight into the circus there, and that's where I learned how to do high diving because traditionally, diving is only 10 meters, but in Macau, I was doing 25 meters. … Going twice as high as I'm used to was scary the first time, but once you do it, it's really addicting.”

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the production and the entertainment industry. Married at this point, Arnett and her husband moved to Cancun, Mexico, where they started a coffee shop.

While there, Arnett practiced high diving in the cenotes outside of Cancun. She shared her training “facility” with snakes, spiders and parrots.

Coming out of the pandemic, she received an invitation to compete at a Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series event, but two weeks beforehand, an official from Cirque du Soleil contacted her, asking her to be a part of “O,” a water show held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Arnett agreed to a contract and headed to Vegas.

“I thought I would be more stable doing a show rather than competing because there is always a lot of pressure to compete,” she said. “In a competition, you're diving for scores, whereas in a show, you're diving for applause. It doesn't matter if you make a big splash, or anything like that, the crowd is going to go wild no matter what. … I decided to go with the more laidback lifestyle of performing.”

Most in the diving world consider being a part of “O” as the pinnacle for a diver, and Arnett was a part of “O” for three years.

But the desire to compete again started to grow, and Arnett found herself trying to sort through those urges.

“I always had these moments like, ‘What if I regret not doing competitions? What if I regret not trying to do Red Bull?’” she said. “It's always been knocking on the door, and I've just never opened that door yet. I thought, ‘If I want to do this, I will have checked every bucket list that any diver would have for all of these diving careers.’ And I decided to just go for it.”

In 2024, she received another invitation from the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series to compete as a wild card and decided to take the plunge. Each series event consists of two days of competition at one location, with divers performing easier dives on the first day and harder ones on the second.

Arnett’s first event was in Boston, where divers jumped off a platform into the Boston Harbor. She finished second and has been a regular ever since, competing in places such as the Philippines, Italy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where divers dove off the famed Mostar Bridge into the Neretva River.

“She’s definitely out of the ordinary,” former Virginia Tech diving coach Ron Piemonte said. “I don’t see Kaylea ever sitting at a cubicle. She’s one of those people who needs to be doing something that is a little out there.

“I’m also not surprised at how good she is. She’s such a competitor. She loves to get out there in front of people and do what she’s capable of doing.”

Arnett finished third in the overall standings on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series tour this summer. She also started competing in high diving events on the World Aquatics World Cup and was second in the overall standings. She finished fourth at the World Aquatics Championships held in Singapore in late July.

World Aquatics, the international governing body for water sports, pushed to have high diving included as an Olympic event in Paris last year, but was unsuccessful. Efforts continue to see high diving included as an exhibition sport in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which would open a possibility for Arnett to become an Olympian.

“If they have it as an Olympic exhibition event in 2028, I would put money that she would be on the team, as long as something weird doesn’t happen or injuries or something like that,” Piemonte said. “I think she is the top American high diver. She has proven that she is the best American, so if they do have it, I would hope to see her up there.”

For the time being, things are going swimmingly for Arnett. Currently in her offseason, she gives diving lessons to kids in Las Vegas, while awaiting the start of next season’s Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, which kicks off next May. She looks forward to reaching new heights.

She hopes to compete for another few years, and then after that, who knows? She views life as an ocean of possibilities.

“I consider myself a little bit of a tumbleweed,” Arnett said, a nod to her Texas roots. “Roll with the punches, and wherever life takes me, just be able to adapt to that situation. I'd hope to do competitions for another three years, four years.

“But you know what, wherever the wind of destiny takes me, I'll figure it out.”