![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Joel-cover-of-This-Week--384x500.jpg\")
Photo Courtesy:ISHOF Archive<\/p><\/div>\n
As the Olympic\u00a0Trials approached, Joel became a darling of the media. She appeared on the cover of \u201cThis Week\u201d Magazine, as a favorite not only to make the 1960 Olympic Team, but to win gold in Rome.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, because of the transfer rules of the day, she was declared ineligible to compete in the state championships her senior year. \u00a0 And then finished a disappointing 3rd in the Olympic Trials, just missing a spot on the 1960 Olympic team.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Coral Gables, she followed her coach to Southern Illinois University, where he was studying for his Masters and coaching diving, and she became the only girl on the men\u2019s diving team.\u00a0 Training with the team, but not competing<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of her strength,\u201d said National Team coach Bob Rambo, before the 1961 AAU Nationals, \u201cshe\u2019s able to do dives only men are supposed to do. She has the most difficult set of optional dives in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
And at those nationals, Joel won titles in both the 1m and 3m events and was at the top of the list of the AAU All Americans.<\/p>\n
Later that year, on December 16th, 1961, Joel and Ward O\u2019Connell were married in Freemont, California where Ward had taken a job teaching physical education high school. Later, he became the diving coach at the famed Santa Clara Swim Club while teaching school. He, then, became the water polo and diving coach at Yale University and and diving coach at Arizona State University for 31 years.<\/p>\n
By today\u2019s standards, Joel and Ward\u2019s relationship would be highly questionable, but in those days husband and wife diving teams were quite common and acceptable. Both Vicki Draves, the 1948 double Olympic gold medalist and Pat McCormick, the 1952 and 1956 4x gold medalist were both coached by their husbands. And Joel and Ward lived happily together as a married couple until his passing in 2009.<\/p>\n
In 1962, Joel and Ward created a controversy within diving by objecting to coaches of rival divers serving as judges. And this controversy may have had an impact on the rest of Joel\u2019s career.\u00a0 While she continued to score well and won more national titles, mostly of the non-Olympic 1m event, she never did make it to the Olympic after trying again in 1964 and 1968.\u00a0 She dove in her last nationals in 1971 and spend many years teaching physical education and coaching gymnastics in Tempe.<\/p>\n
According to her sister, Ethelyn Buckley, of Fort Lauderdale, the cause of her passing was Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).\u00a0 According the American Lung Association Smoking is the leading cause of COPD and Joel was a lifelong smoker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could never understand why or how a girl who was such a great athlete would become a smoker,\u201d Ethelyn said.<\/p>\n
But according to a new exhibit in the International Swimming Hall of Fame – \u201cSmoke on the Water\u201d the Tobacco industry manipulated many of America\u2019s most famous female athletes, including hall of fame divers Dorothy Poynton and Georgia Coleman – legendary names when Joel was growing up – to make smoking appear not just glamorous, but healthful.<\/p>\n
In 1980, Joel was inducted into the Broward County Sports Hall of Fame, in Fort Lauderdale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Girl with a Boy\u2019s Name was Ten time AAU Diving Champion Fort Lauderdale \u2013 Joel Lenzi O\u2019Connell was a 10 x National AAU diving champion, and an honoree of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5856,"featured_media":312942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,13,66113,62061,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-diving","category-ishof","category-obituaries","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n