This short intro is written to inform the reader that I do not claim to be an expert in the field of Diving. Likewise, I don't have any claims to being a great writer either. What is written in this section comes from 44 years of experience trying to teach kids how to dive. This writing may give the reader a little different perspective into the basics of diving. This is what I call shared information and it has been shared for many years thanks to the efforts of people such as Hobie Billingsley, Dick Kimball and Ron O'Brien. It is truly unfortunate that in more recent times, this once shared information may cost a fortune to acquire.

Others that have influenced me are Jerry Darda, John Narcy, John Walker, Dan O'Brien (Fenwick High School Athletic Director Emeritus) and team mate Ken Sitzberger (Olympic Champion). Many of the things written on the following pages were derived from the divers I have had the good fortune to coach. I feel blessed because many of those divers are now coaches themselves. I must have done something right to have so many of them still involved in diving.

I would like to thank my wife for putting up with me and also for allowing me to get as involved in Diving as I did over all these years. I also would like to give a special "thank you" to my daughter for forcing me to search for new ideas and ways to deliver the same message to other divers. I believe that experience has helped me gain a better insight not only into coaching but more importantly into being a parent.

As I look toward retirement, I feel that this may be a necessary thing to accomplish. Diving coaches may disappear from time to time but the information they possess should be made available to those who will eventually take their place. That is the intent of this production.

The following topics were given as handouts to the divers. Earlier in my coaching (1972), more detailed info was contained on a steno pad and was given to new divers joining the program. On the following pages I tried to limit that information to one page, which included information that I thought was important for the divers to understand. Included here are some of the figures that were placed on the back side of that written page. These pages were produced as you see them in 1990. I have since updated some of the writings but left the figures untouched.

When teaching beginning diving, the order in which the articles appear under basic diving are followed. We start with introductory material and then move to getting off the diving board both forward and back. Following that divers spend time learning to enter the water. Once these preliminaries are covered, the rest of the lessons are spent trying to learn dives. Few lesson kids only learn how to jump into the water and never dive. At the other end there have been kids that have learned to do 11 dives in the same time span. The most difficult situation is having all skill levels mixed together. This is where these kids will learn dives at their own comfort rate. Some of these kids will lag far behind the others. In this situation the coach must be creative enough to keep their interest until the lesson set is over.

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