Excellence can be defined in many ways. Many of those ways can define the diving career of Rick Kral.

The Farmington Hill, Mich. resident came to Western in the early days of the swimming and diving programs under former head coach Bill Powell and made an immediate impact from 1975-78.

“It was an experience I never expected because I was having too much fun to actually be a beneficiary at the end,” Kral said. “The thing about being about Western, being from Michigan, with coach Powell basically starting from scratch to where they are now, its come a long way.”

During his four-year career, Kral won two Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference titles in both the one and three-meter dive events and is still the only diver in Western history to qualify for the NCAA Championships, doing so in 1976 and 1978.

He set the Western record for scoring in the one-meter dive six-dive at 315.65, a record that still stands.

The chance for Kral to dive at Western may have never come if it weren’t for football.

As a freshman at a new high school, he had never dove in competition. Kral and his football teammates would come in from summer workouts and swim in the pool. The swim coach at the high school saw Kral jumping off the diving board and asked him to come out for the dive team, and a hall of fame career began from there.

Powell also took notice Kral’s skill.

“He was a great competitor and a great teammate,” Powell said. “He’s a great guy, very humble.”

Quite possibly the greatest definition of Kral’s success was at the 1978 Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference meet, where he won the three-meter dive event in close fashion, despite never practicing on a three-meter diving board. At the time Western didn’t have a three-meter board to practice on.

The three-meter event came down to the last dive, with Kral nailing a dive he had been practicing for the conference meet.

“Everybody knew he couldn’t do it. Everybody knew the UK guy was going to win, except Rick,” Powell said. “He told them he could do it.”

Kral’s senior year of 1978 turned out to be his best individual season. He captured his second consecutive one and three-meter dive titles in the KIAC, qualifying for the NCAA Championships for the second time and winning the team’s Most Valuable Swimmer award. He remains the only diver in team history to win the award.

“He just loved the camaraderie,” former teammate Jim Massey said. “He was a team player and lived to go on an away swim meet because he loved bonding with his teammates.”

After Kral’s graduation in 1978, Powell said the team’s diving prowess skyrocketed, thanks to Kral’s success on the board at Western.

“Right after he graduated, we got three great divers in here, because of him,” Powell said. “That helped us for the next four years, after he was gone.”

Though his greatness as an athlete will be honored on Saturday, those close to him didn’t see it coming. He has worked for the last 12 years as a regional manager for Constellation Spirits. When word got out at his business that he was to be inducted, most people he worked with had no idea Kral had been an athlete.

“When I came back up here (to Michigan), no one went to college with me that I could rehash stories with except my wife, so we never talked about it,” Kral said. “Things just get lost in the shuffle. But when coach Powell called me about this great news I was like, ‘you gotta be kidding me’.”

Reach David Harten at sports@chherald.com.