It is not human instinct to fling one’s body off a three-meter springboard, spiraling and bending in the air, headed towards an aquatic abyss.
But for divers, it becomes natural.
Becoming comfortable with flying through the air takes years of practice, but what causes one to try it in the first place?
For three of Northwestern’s divers, it was about following in family footsteps.
“My sister started diving when she was six,” sophomore Mary Kate Campbell said. “So by the time I got to be four, I had to do everything that my sister did.”
Originally diving at a country club near her hometown of Burr Ridge, Ill., Campbell joined a diving club at the local high school when she was five or six. A year after that, she had the opportunity to join the club team at Northwestern, where she has dived ever since.
“I got lucky just because I’ve had a lot of really good coaching throughout my life,” she said.
Campbell’s teammates, Cosima and Felicitas Lenz, also found the sport because of a family member.
“My mom loves to swim and she loves the water, so she introduced us to the water at a really young age,” Cosima, a sophomore, said. “She would take us to Caltech near our house and we just dove off the boards there.”
Along with swimming and diving camps during the summers, the sisters took gymnastics lessons, which helped them train for their future diving careers.
“The flipping and the twisting and the strength (of gymnastics) is really related (to diving),” Cosima said.
At the suggestion of a lifeguard, Cosima and Felicitas joined a club diving team.
“Sometimes diving is really underappreciated,” Felicitas, a junior, said. “Not many people know about it in the U.S., but in China it’s the national team sport.”
Campbell, Cosima and Felicitas all agreed there are aspects of diving that many people do not consider.
“The most unique thing about it is the amount of both athletic ability it takes as well as mental ability,” Campbell said. “It’s definitely a very mental sport.
Obviously you have to know how to jump and flip and twist, but when you get on the board, fear definitely builds up and you have to get past that fear.”
The divers will join the rest of the swim team in Ann Arbor this weekend for a matchup with No. 22 Michigan and Notre Dame.
Last week, the Wolverines upset No. 8 Indiana thanks to big performances from senior swimmer Caitlin Dauw and senior diver Amanda Lohman.
Notre Dame boasts freshman Emma Reaney, who broke the school record for the 200m individual medley and was included in the Jan. 16th issue of Sports Illustrated in a feature called Faces in the Crowd.
The Saturday meet marks the first full-team competition for the Wildcats since November. However, a few of the athletes raced in December, according to swim coach Jimmy Tierney, and the entire team trained over winter break in Colorado.
“Their training’s been good, their attitude’s been really good, so I think the possibilities are there for us to perform really well,” he said. “A lot of these girls really step up during this time of the year. That’s one of the things that we always challenge them to, to see if they can rise above the fatigue and soreness and still perform at a pretty high level.”
