Dive Right In by Matt Christopher Read Free Book Online

gestured to the one-meter board. Traci slowly walked out on it.
     It was scary out there—the water seemed to be very far beneath her feet. She stood like a statue for what felt like several
     minutes, but probably was only a few seconds.
    “Trace? You all right?” asked Sophia.
    Traci nodded, unable to speak or move. She didn’t want to admit how scared she suddenly felt. Surely, no halfway decent diver
     felt frightened on a one-meter board!
    Sophia walked closer to Traci and began speaking quietly. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. A lot of divers are
     scared when they first get on a board or a platform. Even on a one-meter board.Some divers never get over being scared—even champion divers. That’s the truth. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Really.”
    Traci didn’t feel a lot better. She liked Sophia, but found it hard to believe that the coach was telling her the truth. It
     seemed more likely to her that Sophia was only trying to give Traci a boost in morale.
    “Here’s a good way to deal with the fear. It worked for me, anyway. Stand there for a few seconds with your eyes closed and
visualize
your dive. Go through it from beginning to end in your mind, everything you’ll do. Then open your eyes, take a couple of
     slow, deep breaths—and
do it.
Just like that. What’s the worst that can happen? Maybe you’ll be embarrassed, but it won’t kill you.”
    Traci noticed that a few of her young classmates were watching nearby. She suddenly felt angry with herself. She’d done much
     harder things as a gymnast—and more dangerous things, too.
    She closed her eyes, imagined a slow-motion version of the dive, opened her eyes… and went into her approach.
    It was awful. She didn’t get the lift off the board she had expected, didn’t straighten out from thetuck soon enough, and hit the water with her stomach. It stung, and there was a really big splash. As she slowly climbed out
     of the pool, she heard a few younger girls giggling.
    Sophia stopped the giggling and came back to Traci. “The next time you’ll do better. I’m adjusting the fulcrum of the board
     to give you more lift. That was part of the problem.”
    The fulcrum—the point that separated the “springy” part of the board from the fixed part, like the pivot of a seesaw—was adjustable
     by turning a wheel and sliding a bar forward or back to make the springy section longer or shorter. Sophia shortened it.
    “Now you’ll get more elevation and have more time to straighten out. Ready?”
    “I guess,” said Traci. It had to be better this time than the first time. It
had
to. She wouldn’t give those little girls anything more to laugh at if she could possibly avoid it.
    Sure enough, on her second attempt Traci got higher coming out of the hurdle and was able to straighten out her body, but
     she was a little too quick. Her legs went past the vertical and her entry was notperpendicular to the surface. But it was better, and didn’t hurt at all.
    “Good!” Sophia exclaimed. “This time, try to hold your entry position, and as your hands hit the water, flex your fingers
     back. And keep your ankles together.”
    The next several dives were not as horrible as the first one had been, but none of them were all that good, either. Traci
     kept forgetting one thing or another; either her feet weren’t together, or her hands weren’t right, or she never hit the tuck
     because her hands slipped off her shins. It looked like there was no end to the different kinds of mistakes you could make.
     Traci was sure she had made most of them.
    Sophia remained cheerful and positive. When Traci tried a forward dive in the pike position—bending at the waist but keeping
     her legs straight—she did another belly-whopper. At least there were no giggles this time.
    “You have to put more energy into the flex when you bend at the waist so you get more forward momentum,” Sophia said. “That
     way, you’re more likely to hit the