It’s time. It’s her turn. She walks along the tiled floor, her feet splatting on the wet tiles. She takes the first step on the ladder to the diving board, and the crowd dies down so low that she can hear the hum of the air units in the Tech High School pool.
“Deep breaths,” she says to herself.
Her heart pounds as she climbs the ladder and approaches the wheel of the fulcrum. She wipes her legs one last time with her cloth and wrings it out, watching the water hit the board. With just a light touch of her foot on the fulcrum wheel, she feels it turning under her foot. It’s just right for the optimal bounce.
Within her next breath, she stops and visualizes on the board where her next steps will go, where her last landing will be before she catapults herself another ten feet in the air. She envisions herself twisting and then following through with her hands breaking the still water of the pool.
One last deep breath.
Meredith Matchinsky, a Tech High School senior, comes up for air to the roar of the crowd.
She looks at the scoreboard. The scores seem to blur. Finally, the total score comes into view. She’s just broken the school record. Her record.
She blinks because she can’t believe it.
It’s the screaming that brings her back. Her teammates are on the side of the pool cheering and congratulating her. She swims to the edge and pushes out of the pool and is accosted by her team with hugs and slaps on the back.
The first time she broke the school record as a freshman, she believed it was just sheer luck. She never thought in a million years that she would break the record again in her junior year, and now her senior year.
She looks to the crowd to where her mother and grandmother are standing. Meredith and her mother had just been joking about how hard it would be to break the record again.
That’s when it all sunk in.
“I broke my old record. Not by sheer luck, but by hard work and dedication.”
She smiles.
Meredith looks back at her first days as a diver back in seventh grade. She had quit that year because of fear and that nagging feeling of “I’m not good enough.” Her friends did some serious coaxing to get her to join again in eighth grade.
But after conquering her fear of diving, even after several bad collisions with the board, she remembers her years in diving with no regrets.
It’s her last year. She’s spoken with diving coaches at colleges and thinks she’ll continue on after graduation. Right now, she’ll concentrate on her next goal- competing at the state tournament. She’ll focus on the here and now and making the most of every moment simply because she loves every minute of diving.
Update November 16, 2018: In celebration of Meredith Matchinsky’s state tournament berth, we treat you to the moment of her record-breaking dive earlier this year. Best of luck, Meredith!
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