Stuff That I Have Noticed #45: Diving From Thirty-three Feet

I was a self-taught diver in college. No coach, no trampoline; in fact the only coaching I got was by the other divers in meets. Once they realized how unskilled I was, they taught me.

At the lettermen banquet in the 1954 spring semester Dr. Johnson (swim team not diving coach) saved me for last. I’ll never forget what he said. “Ben Bryant, Whittier’s first diver, has a very unique style. It can best be described as Grandma throwing a wet wash rag off the back porch.” Everyone, including me, had a good laugh and I got a letter on the swim team.

Anyhow, in 1958 I was manager of a public swimming pool in Monterey Park (near Pasadena) CA. The pool had Duraflex springboards and an Olympic hopeful who was living nearby asked if he could work out on our three meter board after we closed. I said yes and a lifelong friendship was born.

Scott Catlett was a true intellectual, studying for his doctorate at the University of Texas. He introduced me to Jean-Paul Sartre, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlengetti and the ten meter tower (as the divers called it) at the LA Swim Stadium where he was training for platform diving.

Watching the Olympic divers on NBC gives you very little an idea of what ten meters looks like from that edge. It took me several days of looking down – while being verbally abused mercilessly by the real divers – before I seriously considered going off of the thing. They convinced me that if I stood on the edge, bent from the waist in an open pike position and simply fell forward I’d do an easy one and a half. That turned out to be true; it was easy and it was exhilarating … until the “entry”.

What they failed to mention was how unbelievably hard you hit the water, I mean cement! That’s what it felt like the first time. It almost knocked me out cold. That hand position the olympians use is hard to learn and I never mastered it.

So I was bruising my arms and forehead on every dive. But once having conquered the paralyzing fear, I couldn’t get enough of it. A hand-stand (now they call it arm-stand) with a straight drop and the aforementioned one-and-a-half pike were the only dives I ever tried but I was in no way even remotely interested in or qualified to become a real platform diver. I was just loving flying through the air for two seconds and the pain of hitting the water was a small price to pay.

But, by god, I was proud of myself. And, sixty-three years later, I still am.

PS: Scott Catlett missed the Olympics by less than ten points making him the third best platform diver in the world.

Here is a vlog I did on this subject a few years ago.