If you ask how this began — how, at some point, the Wanzers set their lives to the rhythms of competitive diving — they all agree on at least one cause. It is not, funny enough, that Cochise, the father, has run a pool services company for more than a decade. Sure, that made them pool people, if only because Cochise wore the chlorine smell home every night. But when the twins, Nick and Noah, were in kindergarten, their mother, Nancy, a longtime teacher in Northern Virginia, started managing a swim and tennis club in the summers. While she worked, her youngest boys, identical and inseparable, would waddle along behind her, watching the older kids splash around.

And that’s what did it. The Wanzers went from pool people to pool people, then from pool people to a diving family.

Nick took to diving first. When Noah followed, it turned out their twin thing worked in midair. They were excellent on their own, even better in synchronized competitions. The medals and trophies piled up so quickly that when Cochise asked where one was from, Nick or Noah would shrug and say he didn’t remember. The twins set their sights on college diving. They even mused about the Olympics at the dinner table. When it was time to pick schools, they considered committing to Alabama together. Instead, for the first time, they went their separate ways. Nick chose Virginia. Noah went with North Carolina State. They were freshmen this past year, quite literally getting their feet wet. As ever, diving was both their passion and their community, a way to grow and make friends, the most reliable thing they had.

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Well, until it wasn’t anymore.

IN EARLY MARCH, coaches informed Nick and his teammates that Virginia was suspending its diving program for the foreseeable future. Five days later, N.C. State slimmed its swimming and diving roster down to one diver. Noah was cut. Whenever a college program is axed or pared down, there are school-specific factors, few of which are ever directly conveyed to the affected athletes, coaches or fans. But as the Wanzers deal with the fallout of Virginia’s and N.C. State’s decisions, athletes around the country are in a similar type of scramble.

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There is a common thread between many of their situations.

And, naturally, it has to do with money.

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And football.

And basketball.

And not really diving at all, once you start to break it down.

On Tuesday — July 1, 2025 — colleges started paying athletes directly for the first time, the result of a major legal settlement that was formally approved last month. For the coming academic year, each school will be allowed to pay up to $20.5 million to athletes across sports, though most of that will go to football and men’s basketball players. The settlement also instituted roster limits in every sport, permitting schools to offer unlimited scholarship money to a smaller number of total athletes. Every power conference athletic program, including Virginia and N.C. State, will participate in the new economy. Many other schools will, too, meaning almost all of their rosters have been reshaped — and as you read this sentence, staffers are flipping over couch cushions, looking for a spare nickel or million to keep up with higher spenders.

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One strategy, of course, is cutting costs. And one way to do that, of course, is cutting sports or athletes or both. A spokesman for Virginia athletics declined to make anyone available to discuss the suspension of the school’s diving program. A spokesman for N.C. State athletics declined to make anyone available to discuss dropping most of its divers. It’s possible that any school has wanted to cut or scale back on a sport for years, for whatever reason, and the settlement offered an out, an easy explanation, with the need to pay athletes and the related roster crunches.

But as part of the settlement terms, all athletes who lost their spots because of them can transfer to a new program and not count toward its roster limit for the rest of their careers. They are referred to as a “designated student-athlete” (or DSA). Virginia put Nick on the DSA list in June. N.C. State did the same for Noah days before the deadline Sunday. So even without official comment from their schools, that makes it clear the settlement contributed to their roster spots being cut. Into the summer, with their sophomore years starting in less than two months, they had to sort through what that means.

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“If they want to pay a football team $20 million to play in college, fine,” Cochise said. “That’s got nothing to do with me. That really has nothing to do with my boys. But they worked their entire lives, they got this spot, and they had it taken away because you want to pay a football player millions of dollars?

“That’s not fair, you know? And not only is it unfair, it’s absurd, honestly.”

JUST LIKE WHEN they started diving as kids, Nick went first.

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Toward the end of the winter, he started hearing that friends with other diving teams could lose their spots. At that point, the settlement was still an if, even though many schools were making choices in anticipation of it being approved. The new roster limits for Division I swimming and diving, which are always combined into one program, would be 30 athletes each for the men’s and women’s teams. That left divers much more susceptible to cuts than swimmers.

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With the way swimming and diving is scored, teams can win meets, including conference and NCAA championships, without any divers if their swimmers are strong enough. And because the swim coach often runs the program — including at Virginia, where Coach Todd DeSorbo also led the U.S. women’s swimming team at last year’s Paris Olympics — divers are much more likely to get lost in the process of downsizing or restructuring.

So after the ACC championships in mid-February, at which the Virginia women’s team won its sixth consecutive conference title, the interim diving coach called a meeting at the pool. Nick and the other divers knew it meant bad news. But the rumor was that any diver who scored at the ACC meet would be safe. Nick was in that group. Then, through tears, the coach dropped the hammer.

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“They just cut the entire dive program,” Nick soon told Noah over the phone. Walking out of the pool in a daze, Nick’s first instinct was to call his brother. They had shared everything, starting with a womb, and this would be no different.

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“And I think that was definitely a shock for him, too, because he was like, ‘Oh my gosh, now this is a reality that could happen at my school,’” Nick said. “Nobody is safe at this time is basically what it meant for everyone.”

Five days later, Noah was working out when his coach texted, asking him to swing by for a quick meeting. A text, as he and his teammates understood it, meant the chat would be bad. Noah’s face got hot, making him wince.

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“It was horrible,” he said. “Once I got cut, I mean, the next two weeks were like the worst two weeks of my life. It just felt like I didn’t really have a purpose anymore. I had worked so hard to get to where I was, I had such a great year, and then for all of it to just be flipped on me, for them to say you can’t be a part of this team anymore, along with a million other people, it was really hard.

“And then understanding that trying to go somewhere else was going to be extremely difficult because it’s happening everywhere … that just made things even worse.”

HOPING TO KEEP NOAH around the program, N.C. State’s diving coach asked whether he wanted to be a volunteer assistant. Noah declined, feeling it would be tough to be there and not competing, especially so soon. He stayed out of the pool for months, waiting until he and Nick started their summer lifeguarding at the club Nancy manages. He told friends and family he was done, even if he wasn’t totally sure he meant it. Nick, meanwhile, kept hoping for a break.

“The transfer portal is flooded with some of the best talent in the country, which is making it very hard,” Nancy said. “And while they had some coaches reach out — they talked to them, they read transcripts — it really looks like most of these athletes that are in the portal have nowhere to go.”

When The Washington Post first interviewed Nancy in April, the settlement hadn’t been approved yet. The federal judge who would ultimately issue a ruling had asked the lawyers to make sure athletes losing spots — athletes such as Nick and Noah — could transfer and not count toward the roster limits at their next school. While the judge deliberated, representatives for USA Diving, including its president and a few Olympians, visited Capitol Hill. They met with members of Congress, asking them to remind the power conferences that diving is its own sport in the Olympics, not just swimming’s sidekick, and therefore deserves a say in decision-making at the college level. They wanted protections for the pipeline from college diving to the national team. As an extension of their discarded sport, they just really wanted to be heard.

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The time of year, with one academic year ending, with the settlement crashing down, made everything more urgent and difficult. If Nick or his teammates heard about a potential opening, they didn’t share it in their group chat. That a coach was recruiting, that there could be a spot out there in the great unknown, was precious intel. If word got out, Nick figured it would take an hour, maybe two, for dozens of divers to email the program. They were all locked in a sort of Hunger Games.

“It’s just really heart-wrenching what they’ve done to these kids,” Nancy said. “And now, going through this transfer portal, it’s like a roller coaster every day. We’re a very positive family. We’re always like, ‘Life is hard; you got to roll with it.’ But every day it just seems to be like: ‘Oh, we might be going here.’ … ‘Ope, they said no.’”

Nancy and Cochise told Nick to register for fall classes at Virginia. They told him to secure housing, too, worrying he could be left with few options. By late May, as everyone waited for the judge’s ruling, Noah had lost his housing at N.C. State and was scrambling for another place. And once Nick connected with Hawaii’s diving coach, the Wanzers considered paying for two rentals at once, at least until he made his decision. Because Nick and Noah were not on athletic scholarships, most of their costs have come out of the Wanzers’ pockets.

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Around the country, thousands of athletes faced the same uncertainty. Utah discontinued its women’s beach volleyball program. Grand Canyon cut its men’s volleyball team. After the judge approved the settlement in early June, Washington State axed all field events from its track and field program. Desperate, hoping against all odds, Nick and his teammates wrote a letter to Virginia’s swim coach, athletic director and school president, asking one last time whether the diving program could be restored. No, was the firm and final answer, and then the school provided the list of DSAs.

Noah, set on staying at N.C. State, also asked whether there was a chance he could continue diving. No luck. The one diver retained when the school cut Noah has since left the program. He has not been replaced. For the 2024-25 season, N.C. State had an online roster for swimming and diving. Now, for 2025-26, only swimmers are listed.

In the middle of last month, the Wanzers traveled to Hawaii for Nick’s official visit. The coach extended an offer. Nick, then, faced a complicated choice at the end of a draining process. He could uproot his entire life to keep diving, two flights and more than 5,000 miles from home. Or he could stay where he already has friends, a major, fall classes and somewhere to sleep come August.

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On Monday, a day before colleges started paying athletes, Nick called Hawaii’s coach with his decision. He is staying at Virginia. Both he and Noah will remain at the schools they picked out of high school. They’re open to diving in the future should the system throw a bone to two of the many athletes it left behind.

“It was a tough decision,” Nancy said. “And one that he shouldn’t have had to make.”

BACK WHEN NICK AND NOAH started competing, other parents would joke that they had an unfair advantage. True to its name, synchronized diving is about being in complete sync. As twins, Noah felt one trick, called a gainer, was where they could really excel. On their own, they were each good at it. But when they did it at the same time, in what looked like a moving, mirror image above the water, it was hard to imagine anything better — anything more satisfying and safe — than diving together.