“Diving is like flying…until you’re not,” said senior diver Kelly Dougherty, now beginning her third year on Lower Merion’s diving team. Few students at LM are even aware that the school actually has its very own diving team, yet the diving team still persists in gracing, and sometimes splashing into, the turbulent waters at Saint Joseph University’s pool, the venue that the team will call home this year.
Unlike many sports at LM, including some deceivingly team-driven sports like cross-country, diving is an incredibly individual-based sport, dependent on extreme mental focus and personal willpower. Senior Kelly Dougherty, co-captain of the team, expressed that diving is an individual sport supported by a wonderful group of people.
“Camaraderie is great and team huddles are great, but when it comes down to it, diving is an individual sport,” said Dougherty.
As she stands on the board, ready to thrust into a dive, Dougherty’s face sobers and often she close her eyes, preparing mentally for the flip, turn, and plunge into the water.
Paul Speicher, LM’s swimming coach commented that this concentration is “the most difficult part of diving. During meets, all of the chattering and distractions going on make it very difficult for divers to focus on the dive that they are about to embark on, and even the slightest noise, like a cough or hiccup can be a major distraction. That’s when injuries occur.”
To the two co-captains, Dougherty and senior Marta Bean, it seems that the most difficult threshold to pass in learning how to dive is overcoming the fear of injury.
“I think all you need to learn to dive is the ability to disconnect from fear that you’re going to hurt yourself. Diving is dangerous, but for some reason, the only people who ever get hurt are the ones worried that they will…it’s all mental!” said Bean.
Dougherty agreed, recounting her own experience of overcoming this fear.
“When I first started, fear dominated my form. And then I landed flat on my back, stomach, face, legs, and arms enough so that I was no longer afraid of the pain. I’d experienced the worst— at one point I had bruises like splatter paint from the water—and once you know you’ve seen the worst, the fear goes away. And all of a sudden an entire world opened up.”
With five main different types of dives – front, back, inward, reverse, and twist – and many variations of these different categories depending on how many twists one incorporates, it is easy to understand how different people can have different abilities and fears. Bean admits, “I’m so afraid of reverses,” a dive that involves jumping forward off the board and then thrusting yourself backward into a flip, a dive that can easily result in injury from hitting the board. Bean continued, however, that “I’m never afraid of any backwards dives.”
To the members of the team, each dive is a matter of conquering their individual fears. Each member has slightly different fears and strengths when it comes to competing. While some are extremely practiced, solid, and beautiful at performing less challenging dives, others are less precise but have the ability to take on more challenging dives, like the “reverse.”
“You begin to learn by trying. Diving is a sport where you absolutely cannot be uncommitted. If you do not believe 100 % in what you are throwing, it won’t work,” said Dougherty.
The three-year varsity member keeps working to progress in diving because, “it gets boring, being limited by fear. You want to move on and try new things, and sometimes that hurts, but after a while you get to a point where you would have to royally mess up to reach new pain limits.”
Fear aside, both co-captains agree that diving simulates an experience similar to flight.
“Diving feels awesome when it’s done right; it’s sort of like you’re flying for a very short amount of time,” said Bean. “The only thing is that the actual dive is so quick that you don’t really feel much until you hit the water. If you do it well, you can always tell according to your entry, and if you mess up, well, you get a nice huge bruise.”
Dougherty describes the feeling in her head as she is about to step into a dive as “calm and empty.” “When I’m in the air, my body takes over. It’s like you’ve pre-programmed everything in…I just hope my body follows me where I want to go. It’s almost magical.”
And when it comes time to compete, the diving team supports each other as collectively as the actual dives are individual. Normally, three boys and three girls compete from each team, but LM’s team does not include any boys. Each team member performs six different dives and receives a score out of ten based on each dive. The scores are actually based on an Olympic scale, so a good score for the team’s divers is somewhere between 3 and 5. Dougherty claims that “[she] would be ecstatic if [she] received scores of all fours and fives in a meet.”
Without any boys on the team, the girls work very hard to achieve the same quality of dives that boy counterparts would achieve.
“The way that boys are shaped allows them to get more height on the board, which makes them naturally better. However, any girl can be just as good if she can work the board the right way!” said Bean.
Boys are able to get a higher jump from their “hurdle” (the thrust upward that begins a dive), which allows more airtime to complete for flips and turns.
In addition to the construction going on this year, the team is suffering many other limitations. Their pool time has been cut down by half of what it was in Lower Merion’s old pool. Now the team uses only 45 minutes of time with just one diving board, which resulted in the team making its first cuts ever this year.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, each member shows extreme enthusiasm towards the sport. In addition to the wonderful flying feeling that both Bean and Dougherty experience, Dougherty expresses how much of a challenge and quest diving is for her.
“It gives me the opportunity… to create something perfect and beautiful. It also gives you so much room to grow. I did not start out a good diver. I had potential, which I still do, but I’ve improved so incredibly much over the past two seasons, and hope to still this season,” said Dougherty. The diving team is working incredibly hard this season to learn and develop as individuals and as a team, competing to be the best. Diving presents a huge mental task that requires very committed and enthusiastic people to attempt, let alone refine and conquer. Each member of the Lower Merion diving team is fighting her own fears, and is working towards having a great season.
Emily Eisner
Class of 2010
