Dive Right In

by Matt Christopher

  Margo had Traci demonstrate a few other basic skills. At the coach’s direction, Traci swam down to touch the bottom of the pool at its greatest depth, then did it again, this time picking up a coin that the coach had thrown into the water. Traci went across the pool, using only leg kicks while holding a kick-board. She was surprised at how hard it was and how long it took.

  “Good,” Margo said. Traci wondered if she’d actually get to dive, now that she had proven that she wouldn’t drown in a swimming pool.

  Not just yet. Instead, Margo said, “Please come here,” and pointed to the side of the pool. Following Margo’s instructions, Traci knelt on one knee at the edge of the pool.

  “Good,” said Margo. “Now, roll forward into the pool, tucking your chin in and extending your arms before you hit the water. Once you hit the water, flex your hands so your fingers point up toward the surface.”

  Traci nodded and executed the move, straightening her arms so her hands cut the surface of the water before her head went in.

  When she surfaced, Margo beckoned her out of the pool. “Your chin wasn’t tucked in enough. Also, you didn’t extend your hands properly when they hit the water, and you didn’t point your fingers up. Once again. This time, tuck your chin in tightly and try to control your hands more carefully.”

  Traci didn’t have a clue what this proved, but tried to follow Margo’s instructions in every detail.

  “Better,” Margo said, though she wasn’t completely happy. “Once again. Time the extension of your hands so that your fingers are straight just before they reach the surface of the water—not too long before and not after.”

  Good grief! Traci thought but didn’t say. She did it again… and again. Finally, Margo said, “Enough. Now, stand at the edge of the pool and bend slowly forward from the waist—keep your legs straight—until you fall forward toward the water. Then, tuck in your chin and straighten your arms and hands as before.”

  Traci ran through the instructions in her head and nodded. Then she did what Margo had told her, or so she thought. But Margo had Traci repeat the move several times, making tiny corrections each time. Once it was the position of her shoulders before she started forward; once Margo thought that Traci’s head wasn’t exactly aligned with her spine, so she used her hands to make a slight adjustment in Traci’s posture. Finally, Margo was satisfied.

  Traci couldn’t resist asking, “What was I doing just then?”

  “That was what we call the ‘pike position,’” Margo replied. “When you do a dive where you bend at the waist but your legs are straight, that is the pike position. As you approach the water, you straighten out—that’s the ‘come-out.’ Then you enter the water with your body in a straight line and with as little splash as possible. The other diving positions are called the ‘tuck’ and ‘straight’ positions.”

  Margo paused while Traci dried herself with the chamois. “In the tuck, you tuck your body into a tight ball and do a come-out before you hit the water, just like you do from the pike position. When you went into the water after kneeling, you were basically doing the tuck position. In a dive done from the straight position, your body remains in a straight line. Is this clear?”

  Traci nodded.

  “Good,” Margo said. “There are many dives from each position. In some, you go off the board or platform facing toward the pool. In others, your back is to the pool. Some dives require somersaults. Others involve twisting your body. Those are harder. But don’t worry about all that. We have a lot of basics to do. Let’s get back to work.”

  This time, Traci dove from the edge of the pool without bending at all—the straight position. Margo frowned.

  “What you did just then would have been fine if you were swimming in a race. You jumped forward,as if you wanted to cover as much distance as possible before you hit the water. That’s the right idea, for a racer. But a diver needs to jump up, to get the height you need to execute a dive before entering the water. Try again—and think about jumping up instead of out.”

  Traci thought for a moment and tried to jump higher. It felt odd, and, as she climbed out of the pool, she said so.

  “It will feel normal eventually,” Margo said. Traci did several more, trying to adjust according to Margo’s constant and (Traci thought) picky correction. She knew she’d done well when Margo said nothing. Apparently, unlike Jeff, this coach didn’t believe in praise.

  Finally, Margo said, “Please change into the workout clothes you brought. I’ll meet you in the second-floor exercise room.”

  Traci changed in the locker room, used a neat little machine that dried out her swimsuit in a few seconds, then went upstairs. The exercise room contained several mats and a large, round trampoline. Traci felt more at home there.

  Margo was waiting, looking impatient again. Traci suspected that Margo always looked that way. With Margo was another woman, younger, with curly brown hair and a warm smile.

  Margo gestured to the other woman. “This is my assistant, Sophia Brigati. You’ll be spending a lot of time with her, especially at first, if you continue in my program.”

  “Hi, Traci,” Sophia said. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

  “With your gymnastic background, I assume you’ve spent time on trampolines,” Margo said. Obviously, chat time was over.

  Traci nodded. “Sure. We have one—had one—just like this for Jeff’s class.”

  “I think we can work without the safety harness, then. Sophia will help spot you,” said Margo.

  As Traci knew, “spotters” watched while athletes worked on equipment where accidents might happen. An experienced spotter could almost always keep the athlete from getting a serious injury.

  Traci swung onto the trampoline and did some warm-up jumps, getting used to its surface and tautness. Then, following Margo’s direction, she went through some simple acrobatics: forward and back somersaults and flips. Margo had Traci do front and back flips in the pike position—with straight legs, bending only at the waist. After the constant correction at the pool, Margo had little to say here. It was obvious that gymnastics had been good training for some aspects of diving.

  Margo then had Traci do some of the same moves on a mat. There, too, she had nothing to say. Traci noticed that Margo and Sophia were making comments to each other that she couldn’t hear.

  After ten minutes of work on the mat, Sophia said, “See you soon,” waved, and left. Margo turned to Traci. “Please meet me here on Saturday morning at ten o’clock.”

  Surprised, Traci asked, “We’re done for today? Am I going to dive Saturday?”

  “Not until you’re ready,” Margo replied. “Remember, you’re getting a late start and there is still much to learn.”

  She nodded and walked away. Traci watched her go, wondering if she should feel happy or annoyed.

  4

  So, do you like diving? How was the new coach?” asked Pete, as he grabbed a drumstick from the chicken platter.

  Traci frowned. “I don’t know. Margo isn’t exactly Miss Personality. We were there for two hours, and she never said a single nice word. She just kept giving me these really fussy little criticisms. And I never got to dive.”

  “If you never got to dive,” Mr. Winchell said, “what was the coach correcting?”

  Traci explained what she had done in the pool and in the exercise room. “It was really kind of dull, not at all what I was expecting.”

  Mrs. Winchell said, “It sounds to me like this coach wanted to see what you could do, and how you responded to corrections. She doesn’t know you, after all, and she’s right: You are new to diving, and you’re a late starter.”

  “Margo sounds like my English teacher this year,” said Pete. “She can really be brutal to me and a couple of others in the class. Most of the kids she doesn’t treat that way, but with a few of us…” He shook his head.

  “At first I thought she was picking on me because she didn’t like me for some reason,” Pete continued. “But then
I decided it isn’t that at all. She wants me to do well, and this is her way of getting me to work harder. And the fact is that I am working harder, and writing better.”

  “Seems to me that it’s way too early to pass judgment on this Margo,” Traci’s father said. “Let’s see what happens over time, and maybe she’ll lighten up, or you’ll get used to it, or you’ll see it as a challenge, like Pete and his English teacher. And, Trace, nobody’s forcing you to go on with this. You can always quit.”

  When Traci left the dinner table, she felt a little annoyed. Her family hadn’t been as sympathetic as they should have been. And there was no way she was going to quit—not yet, anyway.

  She was doing her homework when there was a knock on the door of her room. Traci opened it to see Valerie holding her gym bag.

  “I had to stop by and see how it was,” said Valerie, tossing her bag on Traci’s floor and flopping onto the bed. “How do you like her? Was she totally awful?”

  “Not totally awful,” Traci said, “but I didn’t like her. She’s really cold, and nothing pleases her. She had me doing this really boring stuff over and over, and she made a million tiny little corrections. ‘Once again, and hold your left shoulder a millionth of an inch higher than your right shoulder.… Once again, and flex your wrists a teensy bit less…. Once again…. Once again….’ It was making me crazy.”

  “Huh,” Valerie said. “So you hated it.”

  Traci sighed. “Jeff was always giving you compliments. Even when you messed up, he’d say something to make you feel better. He’s really sweet, you know? And Margo is just so… icy. Working with her isn’t going to be any fun at all. Zero.”

  Valerie nodded, looking thoughtful. “I see what you mean. But maybe it’ll be better when you’re in a group, working with other girls. There’ll be people you can talk to, and that should help.”

  “Maybe,” Traci agreed. “If she lets you talk, that is. She may not let you talk or think about anything but diving and keeping your hands flexed. It wouldn’t surprise me if she ran things like a prison.”

  Valerie laughed. “Wow. You really don’t like her, do you?”

  Traci shrugged, irritated. “What’s to like?”

  “I see what you mean,” said Valerie, “but I wonder: Is being nice and sweet what you want in a coach? Don’t forget, Margo has trained athletes who won Olympic medals. She must have something going for her to do that.”

  “You can be a great coach and still be nice,” Traci pointed out.

  “I wonder,” said Valerie. She started picking at Traci’s bedspread. “I mean, I agree that Jeff is a very nice guy. But how many champions has he trained? Has he worked with any Olympic medalists?”

  “Who knows?” Traci replied. “For all we know, he’s worked with top gymnasts.”

  Valerie raised her eyebrows. “Oh, come on, Trace. If Jeff had worked with champions, you really think we wouldn’t have heard about it in all these years? You think he’d have kept it a secret? I don’t believe it!”

  Traci stared at Valerie. “It sounds to me like you aren’t so crazy about Jeff. Is that true?”

  Valerie lowered her gaze and started picking at the spread again. She didn’t say anything for several seconds.

  “Val? What is it?” Traci prodded.

  Finally, Valerie looked up. “Don’t spread this around, but I’ve been thinking about finding a new coach.”

  Traci’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

  Valerie nodded. “I talked about it with my parents, and we have a few names we’re checking out. But I don’t want Jeff to know, unless we’re actually going to make the switch.”

  “That’s amazing,” Traci said.

  “Not really,” said Valerie. “You know that I want to be a top gymnast. And if it takes some kind of hard-nosed type to get me there… well, then that’s what I want. Athletes who win gold medals, or even silver or bronze medals, aren’t in it just for fun.”

  “When you put it like that,” Traci admitted, “it makes sense. But I really loved working with Jeff. I think it would be hard to walk out on him, at least for me.”

  Valerie shrugged. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re as ambitious as I am, and that you’d have done what I’m doing, sooner or later. See, Trace, I think you caught a lucky break. I think the best thing Jeff ever did for you was to call Margo.”

  When Traci didn’t answer, Valerie pressed her point.

  “Here’s the way I see it. If you want to have a shot at being the best, you have to do whatever it takes. Maybe you can have fun and maybe you can’t, but ‘fun’ isn’t what matters. You need to work with someone who will make you work hard, force you to make the most of your talent. From what you’ve said, Margo is that kind of coach. That’s the kind of coach I want for myself.”

  She laid her hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m ready to pay the price. You ought to decide if you are, too. Think about what you really want.”

  Valerie left a few minutes later. As Traci closed her bedroom door, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Valerie had said.

  What did she really want?

  5

  Traci arrived at the pool fifteen minutes early Saturday morning. Her second session was a lot like her first, though Margo actually did have Traci do some diving—but only from the edge of the pool. She said Traci needed to work on getting more elevation, more upward movement.

  “I thought a springboard would do that for me,” Traci said at one point.

  “You need to do it for yourself, too,” Margo replied. “Also, when you dive from a platform, there is no spring involved.”

  Margo added one new item to Traci’s limited repertoire: a forward dive in the pike position. As usual, Margo had a thousand little corrections for Traci to remember as she did the dive over and over. But, even though she found the repetition boring, Traci realized that it helped her become more natural in movements that were new to her.

  When Sophia arrived, she took Traci to do some more work on the mats and the trampoline. At the end of the session, Margo gave Traci a piece of paper with an address written down on it.

  “This is where you will be training from now on. Be there on Tuesday at four.”

  “Is that the place where your divers work out?” Traci asked.

  Margo gave one of her stiff nods. “You will be joining one of the groups on Tuesday. You’ll be working mostly with Sophia. I will come in to observe from time to time.”

  Traci was surprised to discover she was a little disappointed that she’d be working with Margo’s assistant rather than Margo herself. But she comforted herself with the knowledge that Sophia was a nice woman who actually smiled and was willing to give out a compliment now and then.

  When Traci arrived for her session on Tuesday, she looked around her, thinking that this was more like it. There were three big pools. The first two had diving boards of different heights, from one meter, or just over three feet, above the pool, to three meters—almost ten feet—from the water. The three-meter boards made Traci nervous; they seemed uncomfortably high.

  When she looked at the diving platforms at the third pool, she felt dizzy. The three platforms were attached to an enormous tower, with a staircase that went to the top. The lowest platform, which jutted out from the left side of the tower, was three meters above the water. The next platform, projecting from the right side of the tower, was five meters up. The highest tower, jutting from the middle of the tower, was ten meters up. Ten meters was over thirty feet. Diving off a ten-meter platform would be like diving off the roof of a three-story building! Traci wondered how anyone ever had the nerve to do that. She doubted that she could ever get herself to dive from up there, even for an Olympic gold medal.

  “Traci! Welcome!” Sophia came over, smiling. “Ready to go to work?”

  Traci liked Sophia’s attitude a lot more than Margo’s. She smiled back and answered, “Absolutely!”

  “I’ll take you to the locker room and assign you a locker,
” Sophia said. “Then you can get into workout clothes and meet us in the workout room. Okay?”

  “Not the pool?” Traci had hoped to do some diving today.

  Sophia’s smile became apologetic. “Not today. We’re going to start with some introductory stuff. I’m afraid you won’t be getting wet just yet.”

  Traci hid her disappointment, reminding herself not to be impatient. She changed, then headed for the exercise room. This was a large, brightly lit space with mats, a couple of trampolines, and bare floor, some of which was marked out in mysterious patterns.

  Sophia was there, along with about a dozen girls, who seemed to be between seven and nine years old.

  “Come on over,” Sophia called. “Meet the other girls.”

  The other girls? thought Traci. Is this the group I’ll be working with?

  The girls were talking among themselves and eyeing Traci with curiosity. Sophia said, “Girls, this is Traci, a new student here. She’ll be working with us for a while.”

  Stunned, Traci barely managed to smile and say, “Hello.”

  There was a chorus of hello’s and hi’s from the young girls, along with a few giggles. Sophia must have seen Traci’s confusion. She said, “Listen, girls, you get started on your warm-ups. I’m going to show Traci around.”

  Sophia gestured for Traci to go with her. The two walked across the room, where they could speak without being overheard.

  “Uh…” Traci wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. “I was… I sort of thought… aren’t there girls here who are my age?”

  “Not at the moment,” Sophia said. “I mean, Margo works with girls of various ages. But the girls of your age or older who work with Margo are experienced divers. The only ones who are relatively new to diving are the younger ones, like these girls here. Actually, even they have some experience. I can see why it feels strange, but until you’ve got a foundation, you’re not ready to work with girls of your own age. You’ll get used to it, and it won’t be forever. All right?”