Bobby Beauchamp was from Mena, Arkansas and spent his youth in a rural setting, but he was living in Denver when he won the Colorado state fancy diving championship in 1918. Shortly thereafter he joined the United States Navy and was with them at the Great Lakes Training Station in Chicago when he was selected to represent the United States in the plain high diving event at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. There, he was sixth in his round one heat and was eliminated. The following year, he tried out for the Chicago White Sox of Major League Baseball, but did not make the cut.