Junior Danielle Fritze's favorite dive is a back one-and-a-half sommersault-pike on the-low-board. Uh-huh. I know Danielle, so I am used to the sweet, matter-of-fact, almost apologetic tone with which she answers questions about her own success. Might she at least explain what this dive entails?
"It's a back flip where you keep turning and end up on your head," she says.
I think to myself that I will stick to step aerobics.
Fritze is already Dartmouth's top female diver and she's getting even better. Returning after a year in which she accomplished more than most college divers ever will, she hasn't slowed to catch her breath.
"She's learning new dives almost every day," says second-year diving coach Chris Hamilton. "Her diving is always going forward."
"She just continues to get better and better," echoes diver and team co-captain Elizabeth Walter '01. "[At] this stage in a diver's life it's very rare that people make drastic changes like that."
Fritze is the second best low-board (that's one meter, for the uninitiated) diver in Dartmouth history, and fourth on the three-meter, which she just picked up freshman year. She is last year's recipient of Dartmouth's Ron Keenhold Outstanding Diver Award, and for the second year in a row she has qualified for the NCAA Zone Championships in March -- the meet one step below NCAA Nationals.
She is also a fixture in the scoring for the women's swimming and diving team, winning at least one of the two diving events at literally every meet. Hamilton calls her "one of the most powerful divers I have ever coached."
"When she climbs up on the diving board," says Walter. "No matter what scary or intricate diver she's about to perform, she has a calm aura about herand then she just goes. Everything about her exudes confidence."
I first understood the magnitude of Danielle's "confidence," if you will, when I stood at the foot of the ill-fated rope swing with a former teammate of hers last summer and beheld the branch from which Danielle enjoyed throwing "twisters," or dives with one-and-a-half sommersaults and a full twist. The branch was, oh, fifteen feet above the platform where the rest of us ordinary people closed our eyes and hung on for dear life. But then again, Danielle is no ordinary person.
Perhaps more impressive even than her feats on the diving board is the effusive 4,000 character blitzes I receive from her coach and teammates in response to my inquiries about her. Danielle Fritze is one of those people who is unanimously loved. Those who know her do not just smile graciously and say nice things about her, they fall all over themselves trying to fit every flattering adjective they can think of into one sentence.
"She's damn smart, really funny, always grinningshe's one of the best people I've come to know while at Dartmouth," says Walter.
"She has the greatest personality in the world," adds Hamilton. "If I ever have a daughter I would like her to be a clone of Danielle."
Which reminds me. Danielle Fritze is an overachiever of almost impossible dimensions. She is a pre-med Chemistry major who has held a top position in her sorority and attends weekly Bible study. When asked what she plans to do with her summer, she shrugs casually, and says, "I'm hoping to do cancer research at the University of Minnesota." And you thought it couldn't get any better.
Fritze started diving in the eighth grade in her hometown of Eagan, Minnesota, when her father bet her that she would like it better than gymnastics if she tried it for one month. Finding her competitive instincts (she calls it "stubbornness") too much to bear, she took him up on the challenge and was hooked. A lifelong gymnast, Danielle competed in both sports throughout high school but began eventually to focus the bulk of her energies on the pool.
"I had to start from nothing," she says. "All the work I put in, I could see where it was going. That made it exciting -- I had challenges to overcome."
Fritze is reluctant to talk about her acheivements on the Dartmouth team.
"The things I'm proudest of aren't usually placing high in a meet," she says. "It's the everyday stuff at practice, like throwing a dive that scares the snot out of me."
The snot? I tell her she is very quotable, and she smiles and shrugs in her typical fashion.
When asked about her team, however, Fritze becomes bubbly and starts to bounce.
"The diving team is one of the most special teams on campus," she says. "We are very much a part of the swim team, but we also have this small little practice group."
As for swimmer/diver relations?
"There's a close bond between the women swimmers and divers. We've worked hard to make it that way."
"Danielle is the leader of the men and women divers here at Dartmouth," says Hamilton. "I also think she has the respect of the swimmers in the same way."
"She's probably our biggest cheerleader," says Walter. "She'll wear her green frizzy wig and paint herself up with green paint and jump up and down on the side of the pool during meets to psych everyone up."
At one meet last year in which there were no diving events, Fritze went so far as to volunteer to swim the 50-yard freestyle so that she could travel with her team. How did she finish?
"I was one of the slowest, if not the slowest," Fritze admits.
Looking ahead, Fritze hopes in the short term to master three new dives in time for Zones.
"That way I'm not getting beat just because I don't have the DD," she says. This time I guess my blank look says it, because she adds, apologetically, "Degree of Difficulty."
"I think she could qualify for Summer Senior Nationals if she dives all spring and summer," says Hamilton. "I also think she could be a contender this year or next year to win the Ivy League Championship. What is great about Dee is that when she gets her mind set on something she is going to accomplish it, not only in diving but in school or in life."
And Fritze has her sights set beyond Hanover. I ask what kind of doctor she aspires to be, and of course there can be no ordinary answer like pediatrician or neurosurgeon.
"It changes from day to day," she begins. "But first I want to join the Peace Corps or do missions -- see the world, grow up. Most of the time I feel like a fifteen year-old kid just out there having fun."
I sigh and feel like a waste of space.
Asked if diving will be a part of her future, Fritze is adamant.
"I am honestly more in love with diving right now than I have ever been," she says. "I can't see myself leaving it behind completely."
Then she gets bubbly again.
"When I come back from break and I warm up," she says, "Say I just do a double off the board. I sometimes sit back and say 'Whoa, that's cool, I just did two flips in the air!'"
