Diver’s intensity makes routines easier i
By KATHLEEN MONJE
Of the Emerald
At a big swim meet, talk, laugh
ter and cheers bounce off the wat
er. But when University team
diver Sam Nixon starts practicing
his diving approaches before his
turn comes to climb on the board,
he blocks out the uproar around
him.
“At all my best meets, when I
get psyched up and score high, I
start doing my approaches on the
deck about four or five divers be
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103.___
3-meter board no trick at all for Nixon
fore my turn,' Nixon says.
In spite of the noise, he says,
“When I start practicing, it’s real
quiet. ’ In his pocket of concentra
tion, he thinks about exactly what
it feels like to make a good entry in
to the water. He goes through the
motions of what his movements
through the air will be, and picks
out the landmarks that will help
him “spot” his mid-air position
changes.
“Then I stop practicing, one or
two divers before I’m supposed to
be up there.” When he does get
on the diving board, he tells him
self — out loud — what his move
ments will be.
His coach, John Lloyd, has
wondered who he’s talking to,
Nixon says, but this warm-up
pattern usually produces his best
dives.
The crowd itself is important to
his meet performance. “When
there are a lot of people around,
the adrenalin really gets flowing,”
he says. “I feel like I'm putting on a
performance, especially when
people are cheering, and I don t
want to let them down."
Competition against other di
vers, including the five members
of Oregon’s diving team, helps
improve Nixon’s diving too, he
says. Freshman Jeff Smith, who
made All-American last year and
has been diving several years
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longer than Nixon has, provides'
tough competition.
“He's got an advantage in ex
perience. “I started diving from the
low board in high school, but he
started when he was about eight
or nine years old.”
Nixon hasn’t yet reached his
own goals for diving. Right now,
he has two large swim meets, the
Northern Pacific and the Pac-10,
where he can accumulate the
points he needs to qualify for the
collegiate national meet this
spring.
Like all college divers, he works
on the one meter and three-meter
boards, doing 11 different dives at
each meet. Five of the dives are
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#32
Sam Nixon
compulsory and the other six are
chosen by the diver and his coach.
Nixon prefers the diving style call
ed the lay-out, where the diver
enters the water with a straight
body.
Because dives are scored by
judges according to difficulty, he’s
trying to add at least one more
complicated dive to his repertoire.
“I’m having some trouble making
progress right now, because I
seem to have reached a plateau in
my diving.
But while he may be dissatisfied
with his improvement, Nixon is
content with working from the
one-and three-meter spring
boards. He says he has no desire
to try for the annual height record
for diving, or to compete off the
cliffs near Acapulco, Mexico.
His team has gone to Portland
to dive from a 10-meter (about 39
feet) board there, and Nixon says
he didn’t like it. “The impact of hit
ting the water from that high hurts
your arms and shoulders.’’
When he was making the
Lo-meter dives, he says, "I was
so scared I went in the water abso
lutely straight. The coach said I
didn’t make any splash at all.”
In addition to diving with the
University team, Nixon spends
several hours a week coaching
the Thurston High School divers.
He is working on a degree in phys
ical education, including pool ad
ministration, and would like to
teach and coach when he
graduates. He has worked as a
teaching assistant with University
diving classes.
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