Taking a Dive by Dr John Melmed ’62

   At the age of 14 years, I was in the 9th grade at Grey High School and I was standing in the gymnasium at the special meeting of all close to 90 boys who were in Noakes House, together with our representative teacher and some prefects. The teacher stood up and said, “Boys, the annual swimming and diving competition between Grey’s houses is coming up in six weeks. We have a full complement of swimmers but we need one more person to complete our diving team of 3 boys. Will someone please volunteer now?”

   I looked around the room at all these boys, many of them fine athletes but no one raised a hand. After a few seconds, the teacher said, “Look boys, if we go into this competition with only two divers, we’ll lose the points that the third diver would have gotten. Is there one boy who will volunteer and possibly be a hero for Noakes.”

   I thought about it because the thought of being a hero sounded cool, but the little voice in my head said, “You can’t do that! You don’t know how to dive. How much of a difference can you make!”

   Feeling uncomfortable, I looked around the room but still no one raised a hand. Finally, a small hand went up. Mine. There was a problem.  I wasn’t a diver. I had never dived competitively and our school didn’t even have a diving coach.

   On the positive side, like any kid, I could jump into a pool! I had a mean bomb-drop which I fully intended doing. I was even known to have dived head-first into a pool from the side.

   With 6 weeks to go before the competition, that was plenty of time to practice, right? Wrong!  The motivation to be a hero for Noakes was there but the desire to practice was not.

   The first time I went to the pool to practice was the day before the competition. Why did I wait so long?  Because I didn’t need to practice diving!  I was 14!  I knew everything! But I reckoned I’d better go to the pool to see what I had to do.

   My two teammates were there diligently practising and I said to one of them, “So, what do I have to do tomorrow?”

   “Well, first, you have to do a forward dive,” said one of them.

   “Okay! I can do that!” I said confidently to myself.

   “Then you have to do a back dive.”

   “Okay,” I said a little less confidently this time.

   “Finally, you have to do a somersault.” He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face.

   “Oh hell!” I instantly knew this event was going to be anything but fun for me.

   Nevertheless, I practised the forward dive and the back dive for 10 minutes until I had them perfected! I didn’t want to practice a somersault because being the day before the competition, I didn’t want to let my team down by injuring myself! I might sprain my ankle landing in the water!

   The big day arrived and I showed up at the pool, nervous. Not expecting the competition to be a big deal, I was shocked when I saw a huge number of parents and teachers, students and competitors all there to cheer on their teams!

   The little voice in my head said, “You can’t do it! Tell them you’ve got to go home because you’ve got an upset stomach and you don’t want to mess in the pool!”  But I couldn’t withdraw now. Who was going to take my place?

   I looked around at my competitors and they were all real athletes with perfect physiques, all wearing those tiny little bathing suits they wore in those days, while I was a thin very unathletic-looking boy with a pimply face at one end, knobbly knees at the other and an oversized boxer bathing suit hiding what little was left in between.

   I signed in with the judges and wrote down a brief description of my three dives: forward dive, back dive, and forward somersault. Then I nervously waited to be called to do my first dive.

   Several other divers did their forward dives and then I was called on to do my forward dive. All the other divers performed their dives from the three-meter board!! Were these kids crazy!?  I volunteered to dive for my school. Not to die for my school!  I decided to do all my dives from the one-meter kiddie board, maybe even from the side of the pool!

   I was about the tenth competitor. I climbed onto the one-meter board and ran down its length and did my simple forward dive. Now, maybe you could say that my hands were slightly clenched, my elbows crooked, my knees bent and my back scoliotic. Otherwise, I was perfect!  I looked at the judges for my score!

   Other boys were getting 5 points, 7 points, even 9 points out of 10. I get ¾ of a point. The little voice in my head screamed, “You see, you’re no good!”

    But I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll do better with the next dive.”

    My turn came to do the back dive.  I stepped onto the board, walked to the very end, turned my back to the water with my heels off the edge like they said to do in the Reader’s Digest! Then I adjusted my bathing suit and jumped up and back.

   Now, when you do the back dive, you’re not supposed to actually land on your back! You’re supposed to enter the water perfectly perpendicular to it. So, maybe I was a couple of degrees off. I looked at the judges for my score!  Half a point!

   What is it with these judges!?  I landed in the water, didn’t I!? My bathing suit stayed on! That’s three points right there! At this point, I was just beginning to doubt my diving ability when the little voice in the back of my head spoke to me and sounded depressed. “John, it’s not too late to go home.” I ignored the voice.

   The announcer called on me for my last dive, “John Melmed will do a forward somersault in the pike position,”    Pike position!?  What the hell is that!? 

   So, I ran down that board as fast as my flat feet could carry me, and I launched myself high into the air! Miraculously, I began somersaulting. I have no idea in what direction. I have no idea how many times, but I was somersaulting! Was this my heroic miracle?!  My arms and legs began flailing in every direction like a rag doll. I had no idea where I was in space because my eyes were tightly shut in anticipation of my death! One of my teammates said afterwards my dive looked like the death spiral of a warplane. Instead of writing down that this dive was a forward somersault, I should have called it a death spiral.

   When your body lands in the water hands first, there should be almost no sound and a minimal splash. I hit the water like a sack of cement. “Kerschplonk!” If only they’d given bonus points for the size and height of my splash.  Up to this point, each dive by every competitor was followed by at least light applause; sometimes loud applause and even cheering. As I rose to the surface, I heard no applause, no cheering. All I heard was a few hundred people people roaring with laughter.

What about the judges? After all, I had succeeded in somersaulting. They were generous enough to give me a ¼ of a point.

   The little voice in my head was using four-letter words I’d never heard before and at this point, I realized that my hopes for the Olympics were dashed. I had embarrassed myself. I had let my team down with a total of just 1½ points for my three dives. Let me state that another way: one and a half points. The lowest score that any other got was 15 points. I got ten times less than that.

    But had I really let my team down? After all, out of nearly 90 boys, I was the only one with the guts to volunteer! Didn’t that make me a hero?  You know what the strange thing was? When they totalled up the points of all the swimming races and each of the dives, Noakes had won the overall competition by one point! My dives had made the difference. What I learned was that you don’t have to be the best on your team. You just have to help your team be the best.

   As I walked home from the competition that day, the negative little voice in the back of my head was silent.