Article August 22, 1977 Issue

DIVE!

Susan Trevithick

Watching the 1976 Olympics on television made me more and more excited about the diving lessons I had signed up for. I could hardly wait. We started off doing straight forward jumps and then back jumps, and everything got a little bit harder every day.

Then we started back fall-ins, and people were catching on with not much difficulty—except for me. Three days after the first lesson I still couldn't do it, and every time I tried I was scared. I'd stand with my arms in position, all ready to go in— and then just wait. I was so scared I couldn't move.

Then the instructor tried ways of making me go in. He put me on a board and tipped the board and made me go in off the side; but I still couldn't do the fall-in alone. The instructor said he had done everything he could do physically and it was all in my head. He said I had a mental block against it. He couldn't understand how I could jump off the towers and do other hard things but not the back fall-in. So I waited a couple more days to see whether I could do it, but I couldn't. I was worried because the final test was coming up in two days' time.

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