For the University of Hawai'i's Mats Wiktorsson and Magnus Frick the forward 1/2 sommersault with a triple twist or a reverse 3 1/2 somersault dive is the easy part.

More difficult is explaining to the people they meet here that UH actually has a diving team.

"A lot of people, when they hear (we're) on the diving program, think, 'oh, so you do scuba,' " Wiktorsson said. "They don't know that we really have a team. I have to tell them it is diving from a spring board. With some people, you have to tell them it is part of the swimming program, before they understand."

Increasingly, however, people are getting the message that not only do the Rainbows have a diving program, but that it is a nationally competitive one.

Consider that UH finished 20th in the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in Minnesota last weekend entirely on the strength of its diving squad. A two-man one at that. Had points been totaled just for diving (swimming and diving are combined), UH would have finished fourth.

Frick finished second in the one-meter and third in the three-meter, the highest ever by a UH men's swimmer or diver, and is competing in the World Aquatic Championships in Australia this week. And Wiktorsson was 13th in the three-meter and platform. This on the heels of the breakout year by the women last year when they had the highest diving score of any team and two years ago produced a national champion in Qiong Jie Huang.

Of course, four years ago, Wiktorsson and Frick couldn't have told you anything about diving at UH, either. Both were in high school in Sweden at the time, more than 11,000 miles from the Duke Kahanamoku Aquatic Complex, little imagining that they'd ever close the gap. Hawai'i was but a backdrop to the Hawaii Five-O reruns they occasionally glimpsed.

"Hawai'i," Wiktorsson said, "was not a place you thought you'd go." At least until UH's diving coaches, Mike Brown and his wife, Anita Rossing, a two-time Swedish Olympian, came calling.

First came Wiktorsson, a seven-time Swedish national champion. "It was a big decision to make, whether to come to the other side of the world ... a different country, language and culture," Wiktorsson said. "But I made the right decision, I know that."

Then came Frick, someone he had known for nearly a decade since their junior days.

Together, at a place they might have once been hard-pressed to find on an atlas, they are helping to put UH diving on the map.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.