One Goofball at a Time
Jessica Livingston, 2007 NCAA Division One Platform National Champion
In the Fall of 1993, I met a little girl who had just moved into town from Dallas, Texas. A little blond stick of a kid, she was a ball of pure energy. This was her first practice with a new club and coach. After an hour of “showing me her stuff" on 1-meter, I asked her if she knew any 3-meter dives.
“YEP!" she blurted, and off she went up the ladder to prove it.
After a few voluntaries, I wondered aloud if she had a front optional up there.
“Oh yeah, I can do a 2 1/2!” I was impressed, and settled back into my chair to see what she could do. She popped up into the air in her hurdle, spun up off the board, and sprang out of her tuck at two somersaults.
POW! She landed flat on her belly at 2 1/4.
I covered my face with my hands, realizing in a flash that I would never see this little goofball again. She would quit diving and take up soccer or something. But then a hand poked up through the surface of the water, and suddenly this little kid is shaking her index finger in a "WAIT-WAIT-WAIT" gesture.
“No no no! I can do it - Really!"
She was out of the water now. There were no tears, there was no hesitation, not even a moment to acknowledge the welts forming on the front half of her body. Before I could pick my jaw up off the floor, she was back on the board absolutely determined to show me that she REALLY DID know how to do a 2 1/2. As it turns out, she could.
Seven years later that goofy little girl headed off to a new program in a new town. She had grown into a high school senior, driving a car, preparing for college. I am pleased to say that all the hours of training never dampened that kid’s goofball spirit. Seven years of dedication and sacrifice, including the agony of landing flat on a reverse 2 3/4 from 10-meter and the glory of doing the same dive for 10’s in a meet, had left her older, more mature, and yet still the same glorious goofball at heart. In spite of those ups and downs, she could still crack up everyone on deck with one of her patented full-body interpretive gestures that expressed just exactly how she felt.
As any parent would readily admit, it is not all fun and games. Coaching and parenting have so many parallels - as coaches we become deeply invested in the success and failure of someone else’s child. We feel the defeats and disappointment. But the frustration and dismay of difficult times is precisely what makes the moments of glory so darn glorious.
Like anyone else, I have moments of self-doubt when I wonder why l do this crazy job. But I have to remind myself that the diving really is not the thing. Diving is just a means to an end - a vehicle that facilitates the journey. And the journey really IS the thing.
The journey is to take that little 11-year-old goofball and help her navigate the pitfalls of adolescence. The pay-off is in watching kids grow, graduate and move on, knowing that your role in their lives has been a positive one.
It’s bittersweet for me to watch divers graduate and move on. If I catch myself feeling hurt or resentful at the loss of an athlete, I remind myself that diving in a positive environment serves to mold the very character of its participants. I remember that the true value of what we do in our training will not entirely reveal itself to our athletes until after they have moved on and grown up. The perseverance, dedication and sacrifice required to succeed at any level of our sport is a benefit that will stay with our athletes for the rest of their lives.
My mission is to keep making small, positive contributions to young kids. l will keep on offering them new tools to add to their tool box - tools like mental toughness, self-mastery, and (when self-mastery falls short) self-improvement. As our organization matures and grows, better tools and benefits will be passed on to more and more kids. I like to imagine that perhaps those grown-up kids will feel compelled to pass some of those benefits on to others; to spread the word, so to speak. When I look at it that way, I am encouraged. We are making a positive contribution to society. In our own small way, even us diving coaches can make the world a better place — one goofball at a time.