It’s been a busy weekend in my household. My daughter is a collegiate diver, and we spent the entire weekend at her diving meet. It was a 2-day meet held at University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and, since it was so close to us this time, we were able to drive over both days to watch her.
Diving has become a very important part in the lives of every member of our family. It’s hard not to respect these kids who train so hard with one goal: not to beat every member of their competition, but to beat their own personal best scores. They put hours and hours in the water training for those six or eleven (depending upon the meet) dives they must execute with complete accuracy. Failure to lose focus can lead to injuries.
Check these out:
This first photo is of a diver who has “smacked” the water while executing a 3-meter dive. I don’t know what the exact dive was, but this diver (not my daughter, thank goodness) did what you and I would call a “belly flop,” only on her back…from 3-meters in the air. To put it into perspective, 3-meters is just shy of 10-feet. So imagine doing a belly flop out of your 2nd story window…only on your back instead of on your belly.
Yes – those are blisters on her back. This photo was taken less than five minutes after the “smack.”
This second photo illustrates what happens when a diver dives off the 3-meter with so much power, then forgets to roll out of it after hitting the water. They scrap bottom. Yes, I’m told it’s as painful as it looks. And yes – this photo is my daughter.
Finally, at the end of a hard practice, the driver tends to be exhausted. I’m not entirely sure, but I’m pretty sure she fell asleep.
So you can see, as a parent watching vicariously, the thrill of victory is as sweet or sweeter than it is for the actual athlete, and this weekend was on of those weekends of “sweet victory.”
As I posted yesterday, my daughter (a sophomore in college) qualified to compete in the NCAA Division II Nationals Swim/Dive Championship Meet. In order to do so, a diver is required to score a particularly high score on either the 1-meter board, or the 3-meter board, and that’s exactly what she did yesterday. Surpassing her personal best score for 11 dives on a 1-meter board, she qualified to compete at Nationals. We’re going to Indianapolis, Baby! If you’d like to see yesterday’s dives on 1-meter, you can follow THIS LINK for my blog post yesterday.
Today was a 3-meter board day. I have a special love for the 3-meter because the divers just look so graceful slicing through water…unless they smack,and you’ve already seen the result of that! In today’s meet, my daughter again surpassed her personal best score for 11 dives on a 3-meter board, and placed 6th in the preliminaries, qualifying her to dive in the evening’s finals, where they take each diver’s cumulative scores for the first 5 of 11 dives and have the “redive” the last six for a final score.
Below is how she did:
Morning Prelims
Placed 6th Place
Evening Finals
Placed 8th Overall
(6 dives + cumulative score of morning’s first 5 dives)
I’m so proud of not only my daughter, but her teammates both current and past. They work harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and I’m awestruck at their dedication and talent!
C.H. Armstrong Books 
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