On and in the Water: Taylor Iantosca's Passion for Rowing and Diving

LA JOLLA, Calif. – If you don’t find Taylor Iantosca out on the water with the UC San Diego women’s rowing team, you might want to take a look under the surface.

In addition to being a Triton scholar-athlete, Iantosca has long been passionate about diving. She started in 2010 when she was just 12 years old, becoming interested after the encouragement of her parents, Tony and Tai.

“[My parents] were really avid divers even before they met,” Iantosca shared. “When I was born, they had to put that on hold to take care of me. 

“They missed it so much that when I became of age to get my license, they put me in class right away and I got in pretty much as soon as I could.”

Iantosca and her family lived in Florida at the time. While they were on vacation, she learned how to dive at an on-site dive school at their hotel on the Caribbean Sea. 

Iantosca moved with her family to Menlo Park in Northern California in 2013. Two years later, the opportunity arose for her to return to the Caribbean.

“I was looking for something to do one summer and I’m a very adventurous person,” Iantosca explained. “I originally wanted to get my pilot license, but there was a diving opportunity in the Caribbean that came up. 

“My options were to either stay in California and go to flight school, or go back to the Caribbean to do diving, and the Caribbean sounded way more fun, so I decided to go that route.”

There are different levels of certification for divers, and the program in the Caribbean allowed for Iantosca to work her way up two levels. The program’s participants lived together on a catamaran for a month while they gained diving experience.

“Boat life was challenging at first,” Iantosca reflected. “There were 12 other people my age, two instructors, and one other supervisor, so you have 15 people living on a catamaran which is meant for maybe eight people to live on. It forces you to get comfortable with each other super quickly.”

“[Through the experience] you get to become friends with everyone. It’s amazing to sleep on the deck under the stars and wake up on the ocean.”

After completing the program, Iantsoca returned home. It wasn’t the last time she would dive in the Caribbean though. 

While looking into summer job opportunities in 2017, Iantosca decided she wanted to become a diving instructor. She packed her bags and returned to the Caribbean again, this time seeking to earn her instructor’s license.

After her successful certification as an instructor, Iantosca found a job at a small dive shop in San Mateo the following summer. Because the diving certification process is half written work and half instruction in the water, Iantosca spent her days grading exams of those seeking certification and teaching them skills in the pool. While in the pool, her focus was to teach aspiring divers how to properly use their equipment and how to react in times of trouble.

“Some of the skills that we teach them are: if the regulator were to get knocked out of your mouth, how can you recover that easily and clear the regulator of water?” Iantosca explained. “If you were to lose your mask, how do you clear it while underwater? What do you do if you run out of air? It’s all these what-if scenarios so you know what to do to keep yourself safe.”

Working at the dive shop in San Mateo was the ideal summer job for Iantosca, who enjoyed getting to help others in their pursuit of certification. 

“People who want to learn how to dive are genuinely interested in it and that made the job easy and really fun,” Iantosca said. “I never had anyone who didn’t want to be there.”

When she’s not busy with school, athletics, and work, Iantosca has enjoyed diving throughout the world. She has been to Hawaii multiple times and dove in Croatia this past summer. However, her favorite location is her original spot: the Caribbean. 

“The Caribbean is definitely my favorite and within the Caribbean, there’s a southern belt called Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,” Iantosca shared. “It’s a really cool area because it’s not really touristy. When most people think of the Caribbean they think of the northern belt, which is Saint Lucia and Saint Barts, the wealthy islands. A lot of divers like to go to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines because it’s so untouched. 

“I remember there was one time we were sailing in between islands and usually there were specific dive spots for us to go to, but we were just curious to know if we went in the water right then, what would we see? We went down and there was this giant field of elk coral, which looks like elk antlers.”

In addition to her experience with the coral, Iantosca has had a number of other run-ins with aquatic plants and animals, which has become one of her favorite aspects of diving.

“When we were diving in Hawaii once, the dive master that was leading the tour saw an octopus go into a cave and he stuck his head in,” Iantosca recounted. “Then it came out at us and latched itself onto my arm. It was super small, so it didn’t hurt, but it was really cool. That’s what made it my favorite animal to see on my dives.”

Another of Iantosca’s top animals to see on her dives are turtles.

“Turtles are really curious,” Iantosca explained. “They really like to come up to you. Once I was diving with my dad and there was a little baby turtle that came up to his mask for a solid five seconds just like, ‘What’s up?’”

Although Iantosca is now comfortable being around the underwater animals, that was not always the case.

“When I started out, I was scared for sure,” Iantosca admitted. “I’d see something and not want to get too close to it. Now, understanding more of their nature, I like getting to interact with them.

“The underwater world has its own culture and it’s so cool to see things that you wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise. You can watch something about the ocean on a documentary, but actually immersing yourself in it is a next-level experience and it’s really magical.”

In her senior year of high school, Iantosca immersed herself in another passion: rowing. Although she had taken part in a rowing camp in eighth grade, she focused on playing volleyball and lacrosse for most of high school, knowing that it might be possible to walk onto a rowing team in college. 

When she was driving down to UC San Diego with her family for a math and science camp prior to her senior year, Iantosca realized she wanted to make college rowing her reality.

“We saw people rowing on Mission Bay and I knew I wanted to do that, and I wanted to do that here,” Iantosca recalled. “It was so pretty and seemed so ideal.”

Iantosca completed her novice year with Palo Alto Rowing Club before coming to UC San Diego. It was challenging for her practicing from 5-7 a.m. before school with a group of mostly eighth and ninth graders, but she kept her sights set on UC San Diego.

“I knew I was doing it for my future, and I had to tough it out,” Iantosca reflected. “It was a little hard at times, but it was so worth it in the end.

“UC San Diego rowing was so much more than I expected in every great way possible. The team was so welcoming when I came and the community here with UC San Diego Athletics is like no other. I’m so grateful that I decided to make this decision.”

Now with three years under her belt at UC San Diego, Iantosca is excited to compete in her senior year. Despite the fact that the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19, Iantosca is confident that the team will pick up where they left off once they return to the water.

“I’m looking forward to finishing what we started and being in Division I,” Iantosca shared. “That’s going to be a new challenge in itself. It’s been so long since I’ve last been in a boat and I’m really excited.”

Whether she is on the water or in it, one thing is certain; Iantosca brings her passion and determination every step of the way.

About UC San Diego Athletics

After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program begins a new era in 2020 as a member of the Big West Conference in NCAA Division I.  The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions III and II and helped guide more than 1,300 scholar-athletes to All-America honors.  A total of 82 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 37 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships.  UC San Diego student-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 91 percent, one of the highest rates among institutions at all divisions.