Saturday, January 13, 2007

dumb or gutsy, we'll never know

The summer after I turned ten, my grandpa began teaching me to dive at the pool when my family went to the beach in North Carolina. After those initial lessons, I continued to dive obsessively every summer, almost until I graduated from high school. I would watch the Olympics and get excited because I didn't see the Olympic divers doing anything that wasn't a variation on something I already knew.

So, when I came to BYU, one of the first things I did was make an appointment with the BYU diving team coach. I didn't tell anybody about it before I went because I had no idea how it would turn out. I had always wanted to dive for my high school, but the program had just started out, and I never had the transportation available to do it anyway. Now, though, that wasn't a problem anymore.

On the day of my appointment, I walked into the cold room, wearing my swimsuit and carrying this bright pink towel that was so conspicuously not BYU-issue, and waited for the coach. A lifeguard wearing one of those bright red lifeguard swimsuits came up to me and told me that I couldn't be there, but I told her I had an appointment and that I was just waiting. She let me stay.

While I was waiting, I talked to a guy who was already on the team, who was just there practicing. We had a fun conversation about diving in general - this distracted me pretty well until the coach walked up.

He was shorter than I'd imagined, and seemed so nice. He asked me if I wanted to warm up, and I said no, but that I would just dive. I got up on the board, and walked out almost to the end on that rough board! I love the feel of a diving board under my feet. Anyway, I took my prep step, got way more spring out of the board than I was used to at home, tried to aim out at the water while keeping my form and getting my height, but I flipped almost all the way over. Three times!

The coach was so nice about it, but I apologized lots of times and left as soon as I could. My neighborhood pool diving board hardly had any spring to it at all; I was used to having to put everything I had into every jump, and I hadn't even tried out the BYU boards before diving for the coach. After I got home, I called and told my mom what I had done, and she was SO proud of me for just walking in there and doing that. (My roommate had the same reaction when I told her what had happened.) It was so out of the blue and not an expected thing, I guess, ha...

I went back to the pool the next day. Within an hour I had the board mastered. Geez louise.

2 comments:

Thirdmango said...

the closest I can come to anything in this story is that I won a belly flop championship once. I can belly flop without flinching, so that's how I won.

Brooklyn said...

Hahahhaahah:) I'm so proud. Ouch. That can't be healthy.