Hello readers. I am going to confide in you I am a man of many fears. The thought of getting shot makes my amygdala pulsate. Just looking at a spider has caused me to wet myself on several occasions. But my two greatest fears of all are heights and back flips. Picturing either one of these is enough to make me shudder, shiver and quiver. So if I had to do both at the same time that is, disorient myself while high in the air with a distinct possibility of splitting my skull open like a cantaloupe well, let's just say I wouldn't be in my happy place.
It is for this reason that this week's event is the one I have been most nervous about diving.
The Setup: My opponent was Madi McClenney '13. McClenney, a member of the Dartmouth diving team, has participated in the Ivy League Championships and qualified for several NCAA Zone Championships.
In our competition, Madi did a dive off of the one-meter board and the three-meter board. My partner Arun Gomatam '13 competed with a jump off the one-meter board, while I attempted the three-meter. Ben Weill '14, who is on the men's diving team, participated as our judge, ranking each of the four dives on a scale of one to 10.
I don't think I have ever done anything in my life with such a negligible amount of hope of succeeding. Madi loves diving; I fear it. She is good at diving; Arun's previous repertoire included the cannonball, the belly flop and the back flop. I had a feeling this wouldn't be pretty.
The Showdown: While Arun has had great previous success in gaining the early advantage with illegitimate starts, we were unable to factor this strategy into this week's face off.
Madi first stepped onto the one-meter board. She inhaled deeply, took a few slow steps to the front of the board and sprung upward. In midair, she tucked into a spinning ball, doing a gainer that continued into a back dive, which is apparently called a "reverse one-and-a-half." She hit the water perfectly perpendicular and created a tiny dribble of a splash. I was very impressed. Ben held up nine fingers.
Arun quickly decided that he would attempt the same maneuver, except rotating forward instead of backwards. He hopped on the board, ran to the front and propelled himself pretty high in the air. He did not attempt to tuck his legs, and slowly rotated forward while thrashing every appendage he had. He rotated a full flip, then kept going and landed directly on his face it looked ridiculously painful. When he got out of the pool, I swear he was weeping, but he claimed he had gotten chlorine in his eyes. Ben flashed three fingers in the air.
Next, Madi climbed up to the three-meter board. She filled her chest with air, slowly approached the tip of the board and sailed skyward. She again tucked into a ball, but this time spun forwards twice then into a dive (a "front two-and-a-half"). She entered the water straight as a plank and created one, maybe two, ripples. This earned her another nine.
Now I knew I was toast. The only way I could win my heat was if I executed a perfect dive and received a 10/10. I don't even think I could perform a perfect pencil dive off this height, let alone some tucking, twirling flips. Nonetheless, I scaled the strenuous climb up the ladder. I tiptoed to the edge of the board and looked down. Three meters may not sound like a lot, but boy did it look high! My vision started spinning and my stomach clenched into a cocoon of nervous fear. I shut my eyes and channeled my inner desire to compete. This cocoon of fear began to metamorphose into excited anticipatory butterflies in my stomach, and I was ready to go for it.
I turned around and bounced up and down on the edge of the board until I jumped up and looked backwards, causing me to spin uncontrollably. I rotated one and a half times and just kept spinning. Next thing I knew, my stomach slapped the surface of the water hard. It felt like I had just received a Falcon Punch to the gut. I had executed a perfect back flip into reverse belly flop, earning a score of two out of 10 from our judge. Now I understand why Arun was crying the blunt pain over my whole body coupled with the shame of earning such a feeble score may have caused me to shed a tear or two as well.
The Breakdown: As I had suspected, this week's performance wasn't pretty. Madi brought her A-game and delivered a decisive thumping to Arun and me with a cumulative score of 18-5. I entered this week with a yellow belly and left with a pink and bruised one. Unfortunately, a trend is starting to develop as the overall score becomes Mike 0, women's varsity 3.
