University of Georgia Athletics
Divers Face Fears On The Tower
January 11, 2016 | Swimming & Diving
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Standing poolside at Gabrielsen Natatorium, it's easy for your eyes to be drawn up to the 10-meter diving platform. Its very presence, even recently when it was dressed up for the holidays with stockings and garland along the railings, is almost a challenge: do you have the guts?
It's one thing to take a running jump off the "tower," as diving folks call it. It's quite another to again and again walk up to the edge, 33 feet above the water below, with time to think. And maybe do a handstand on the edge before diving in.
"There definitely is a fear factor there and the tower divers, sometimes we say they're a little more crazy than the springboard divers," Georgia's longtime diving coach, Dan Laak, said last week.
That the United States is one of the very few countries to not always use the metric system seems a bit silly. Nearly everyone else talks in meters, so why shouldn't we? But in this case, when talking about life on the tower, meters really don't do the distance justice.
Ten meters, at least to American ears, doesn't sound that intimidating, but 33 feet sure does. And that still doesn't seem to fully do it justice. The platform looks much higher above the water than that. If you said it was 50 feet, that would be believable.
Georgia diver Spencer Madanay has been diving for many, many years. He said he first went off the 10-meter platform at a dive camp when he was in ninth or 10th grade. Hundreds (at least) of dives from the tower later, it remains a long way down.
"It's still awful," the junior from Honolulu, Hawaii, said with a laugh last Tuesday, after placing 11th in the UGA Diving Invitational. But at the same time, he said, "I love the fear."
And there it is. Not many sports bring about fear, other than maybe a fear of failure. And if you're competing for the University of Georgia, which regularly challenges for championships in a lot of sports, a fear of failure is likely a bull you've taken by the horns long ago.
But there are sports situations in which fear is real and must be looked right in the face and overcome. Among them: a wide receiver running a crossing route that may end with him largely defenseless as he gets drilled by a couple of safeties; a gymnast doing any number of jumps, flips, vaults and other things than can go really wrong; and divers going off the tower, 33 feet above the water, and hitting the water at (according to various websites) around 30 mph.
Senior Gymdog Brittany Rogers said fear is simply part of gymnastics.
"Every day, whether it's small or big," she said. "You don't get a lot of confidence when you're on a four-inch piece of wood flipping. I've been doing gymnastics for 20 years now and it hasn't gotten any easier. I still get scared."
A lot of divers also have gymnastics backgrounds and a lot of gymnasts have diving backgrounds. For those of us on the outside looking in, they both seem like daredevils.
"Even our best diver ever in the U.S., and in the world, Greg Louganis, he was still afraid of 10-meter," Laak said. "You use the fear and adrenaline and everything to your advantage."
Kelly Thatcher will calmly walk to the edge of the 10-meter platform, do a handstand, hold it for the required three seconds and then launch into her dive. A rehearsed and controlled dive, one that she's spent hours practicing in and out of the water, the Georgia junior will do.
"The funny thing is, I hate jumping off, any kind of jumping off the 10-meter," Thatcher said last week. "I'm like, NO!!! It's just like falling, whereas if you're flipping, you don't feel like you're falling as much. At least you're doing something."
Georgia's divers don't get to perform on the tower too often. The platforms aren't part of meets, which use the 1- and 3-meter springboards. The UGA Diving Invitational earlier this month offered them and the competing schools a chance to compete in a different aspect of the sport, and a chance to face those fears.
"Standing up there, you look down 33 feet and everything kind of gets real, and everything else on the outside stops. You've just got to breathe and hope for the best," Madanay said.
There were three different platforms at Gabrielsen Natatorium for the Invitational: 5 meters, 7.5 and 10. Most divers seemed to go off the tower, which helps add to the degree of difficulty of the dive, which can lead to better scores. Hatcher did all of her dives in the Invitational from the tower.
"Those are my hardest dives so my highest difficulty is on tower," she said. "You want to go after the most points possible."
And fear is an issue for her, too.
"Oh yeah, big time. That's definitely part of it," Thatcher said. "It helps to have your teammates cheering you on and stuff like that, but in order to get the big dives you just have to ... it's a mental thing you just have to overcome."
Like so many things Georgia's athletes do, easier said than done. Although a cannonball from the tower would have to be pretty awesome.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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