Diving head first in this sport is in fact, encouraged. That is, only if it’s off of a three meter board head-first into a large swimming pool.
Cody Fitzgerald, a diver for Keene State College, said that twists and flips are the diving skills that attracted him to take to the diving board.
“I always enjoyed jumping around and flipping on my trampoline at home, so I decided to try out diving my junior year of high school,” Fitzgerald stated.
While swimmers and divers represent the same school, their preparations and roles on the team vary.
David Mason, the diving coach for the team, said that as far as preparation goes, his swimmers have mainly been focusing on core muscles, but have also been focusing on the mental aspect of the sport outside of the weight room as well.
“We do a lot of ‘trust’ [exercises] … There’s a lot of trust in them believing in me, believing I know what I’m doing, believing that I know when to call them out, ” Mason said.
Mason said that there is one major obstacle that towers over all others when a diver is training or competing is the “fear factor.”
“If you mess up on a dive and hit water, it hurts drastically. Then you have to get up and attempt the same dive again, which is very difficult,” Mason said.
Repetition is something that Mason said is key to diver success. Along with repetition, having a strong and positive mentality is also something that brings a diver to the next level. Fitzgerald said that practices take more of a mental toll than a physical one.
“Our practices aren’t as physically demanding, more mentally demanding I guess. We end up doing just diving all day,” Fitzgerald said.
Shelby Iava, a sophomore diver on the team, has some first-hand experience on the importance of the mental piece of diving,
“It’s a lot of believing in yourself, and if you don’t believe in yourself then you’re not going to get anywhere,” Iava continued, “You’re going to get on top of the board and you’re going to just look down and nothing’s going to happen. You have to actually believe to achieve, which sounds corny but it’s true and if you don’t then you’re going to end up hating it.”
Along with differences in training, divers are judged differently than swimmers. While swimmers are judged strictly on the time it takes them to finish a race, divers’ scores are decided by a panel of judges. Divers’ scores are sometimes the deciding factors in close meets.
Despite the individual nature of the sport, members of the team said that the swimmers and divers get along well.
“We click very well … I think it [team chemistry] is pretty good,” Iava said.
However, Mason said that divers are different than other athletes
“Divers have a crazy side to them … We’re a different animal. Black and white. We’re a lot different physically, mentally and emotionally than most other athletes,” Mason said.
So far this season, both the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams have gone undefeated in their first few weeks of the season, and currently have two divers who have qualified for New England’s. Mason said he hopes for the rest of his divers to qualify by the end of the season.
Jacob Barrett can be contacted at jbarrett@keene-equinox.com