Two weeks after completing a healthy sophomore season, Northwestern diver Tania Lyerly was struck by severe back spasms that kept her off the diving board for about three months.
When Lyerly finally re-entered the water in early June, she had to relearn everything.
“It was one dive at a time, very slowly and over the course of the summer,” said Lyerly. “But it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t a challenge.”
The junior has rebounded well from her time out of the pool, posting a personal best in 3-meter diving against Michigan last Saturday. Following her second-place finish against the Wolverines, Lyerly seems to be approaching peak form heading into the Big Ten Championships in February, according to diving coach Alik Sarkisian.
“It worked itself out,” Lyerly said. “It really just reaffirmed my dedication to the sport, to getting good again. Sometimes you need a break, and I got one, whether I liked it or not. I tried to make the best of it.”
As Lyerly relearned the fundamentals, she tried to correct some of the bad habits she had developed over the last five years.
“Sometimes you need a clean slate,” she said. “I don’t think I want to go to getting put out like that, but at the same time it allowed me to start a new foundation with some of the basics.”
Lyerly needed to readjust to one of the most basic parts of diving – getting on the diving board.
“You kind of lose your feel for the board, the spring and the bounce of it,” Lyerly said. “That was the weirdest thing, relearning how to bounce a springboard because your muscles aren’t used to the recoil.”
Climbing back on the 3-meter diving board was increasingly difficult for Lyerly because she dislikes heights.
“That first time I’m up there, my stomach is doing little backflips,” Lyerly said. “Even diving for so many years, I still get up there and am like ‘Oh, this is kind of high.’ But once you hit your stride, you ignore the heights – sort of; you try to.”
Despite her dislike of the high diving board, 3-meter diving has been Lyerly’s strongest event this season.
“She’s improved a lot,” Sarkisian said. “She’s now working harder, and the results came last weekend against Michigan. Without any major injury or missing practices, we can have top performance at (Big Ten Championships).”
Although doctors were unsure of exactly what caused her back to flare up last spring, Lyerly has remained healthy this season.
“So far, knock on wood, I’ve been injury-free,” she said.
But she has been the only NU diver to avoid injuries. In the last two meets, Lyerly has been NU’s sole diving competitor.
“There are only 40 girl divers in the entire conference, so you get to know people,” Lyerly said. “So I try to think of it as just seven divers, rather than six Michigan and one Northwestern.”
Sarkisian said he hopes to have freshman diver Carlin Dacey back for Saturday’s meet at Iowa. The event is NU’s last tune-up before Big Ten Championships.
But no matter who she is competing with, Lyerly will be focusing on her technique, not her competitors or scores.
“I try not to focus on the other divers,” she said. “And scores can be pretty subjective. Usually, I try to go on performance rather than actual score. After a while, you can tell when you hit the water whether it was a good dive or not. It feels so good when you hit the water just right.”
