As a fourth-year diver on Wayland High School’s swim and dive team, I’ve come to realize that few people care about my sport. However, I find diving to be one of the most underappreciated and misunderstood sports at WHS.

I never planned on joining the team, but thanks to my friend’s mom’s recruiting, I signed up. Right off the bat, I had no idea what I was doing, and was consistently one of the worst-scoring divers on the team. With the help of my coaches Andrew Foley and Richard Davies III, I improved to a degree that I hadn’t thought was possible. I took pride in the hard work that my coaches and I put in, and I was happy to see our team achieve success. Each year, I’ve seen impressive scores and multiple teammates qualify for both sectional and state competitions. Yet, from what I’ve observed, only a small portion of WHS is aware of — or takes interest in — our dive program.

At the beginning of my diving career, it became apparent that people didn’t fully understand what diving actually was at WHS. I didn’t fault them for that because initially, I hadn’t known what diving was either. While trying to explain to people that I joined the team, they automatically assumed that I was a swimmer, when in reality I was anything but that. My practices didn’t consist of constant laps of the pool. Instead, I was learning how to hurdle, jump, flip, twist and point my feet.

Although I originally found difficulty in appreciating the sport, once I learned the ropes I came to enjoy the satisfaction of getting better, jumping higher and finishing cleaner. The more I understood it, it became exciting and interesting.

Similar to a sport like gymnastics, divers compete both individually and for the team. The sport is divided into five distinct categories, each with its own level of difficulty based on the complexity of the required skills. At a meet, you complete six dives, all of which are assessed by judges who rate your performance on a scale from 0-10.

Unlike some other sports games, a swim meet’s viewing population is made up of mostly parents who are either watching from the bleachers, or helping out with timing and scoring. There have been few times that I have seen my fellow peers visit the swim meets, so it didn’t feel like our team ever received much support from the student body. But, even within the swim and dive environment, at times it felt that the swim team wasn’t educated on diving either.

I would overhear swimmers say diving looks easy, and that our sport amounts to lounging in a hot tub. It makes me wonder if they have ever truly thought about how cold it gets in the dead of winter when you’re soaked and shivering by the pool. Trust me, it’s not fun. While we may not be building the endurance and speed that the swimmers develop each day, we are learning to launch ourselves off a one-meter board, avoid smacking into the water and somehow make it look graceful—definitely not as easy as it seems.

Diving is both mentally and physically demanding. I’ve watched divers hit different body parts on the board, whether it be an arm, leg or even their head. I’ve also seen – and personally experienced – painful flops that sting like nothing else Although these injuries seem daunting, they pale in comparison to the mental toughness required to excel.

It’s nerve-racking to push your body through the acrobatics of diving, and even the slightest fear of something going wrong can hold you back from improving or trying more advanced dives. You have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and bounce back quickly from any setbacks. This ability to persevere is what has made our team so successful.

Now that it’s my senior year, I can see real progress in bridging the gap between the swimmers and the divers. In the past, I have stressed to coaches that there was a noticeable divide, which they have addressed this season. It was refreshing to see how understanding they were. Now instead of two separate groups, we’ve become one cohesive team that works toward the same goal. Even though we compete in entirely different events, we both rack in the points for a win, which has brought us closer together.

Outside of the team, I hope that more of WHS will educate themselves about diving and learn about their fellow classmates who put hard work into the sport. Many of us have seen an impressive amount of success, and even a little encouragement would go a long way.