My Proudest Moments
These moments go beyond the fulfillment that teaching and
coaching youngsters gives, watching them improve and seeing them grow up to be
successful citizens. It is rather something that most people don�t know
I did or how much extra time, effort and courage it took to achieve.
1.
From the beginning of my high school
coaching career I noticed a problem with judging and our officials. For many
years I wrote letters to the IHSA (Dave Fry and Ola Bundy) regarding what I saw
as the incompetence of our officials at our State Meet. I upset many officials
with my crusade and it did take a toll on my divers when they made it to that meet. That
infuriated me even more so I stopped arguing for my kids and used examples of
other divers to get my point across. I wanted to avoid the �sour grapes�
inferences that were made by the IHSA.
Finally Dave Fry listened and I became the first coach
used on the panel of nine judges at the State Meet 1979. I felt like I was
sitting on a powder keg waiting for it to explode. There were many instances
where my scores differed with the other 8 judges but one in particular stood
out. In the finals my diver did a 303B Reverse 1 � ss pike. I leaned over to
Joe Plack (the referee at the time) and told him to watch this. There were 8
scores of 6 � and my score of 4. My diver had a partial break in position and I
was the only one to catch it and enforce the rule. Here is the most memorable
part for me. The audience booed my score for my diver. That was okay because I
was the only judge that had the correct score for that dive.
This situation led to the two-panel system that is used
today. It also spawned the present diver qualifying system that Jim
Blickenstaff and I worked on with Dave Fry.
2. One day in 1977, an administrator from my 8
high school district approached me. He questioned the safety of the sport of
Diving and told me that he was charged to look into it before the district
considered dropping the program. In our discussions I mentioned that the sport
was safe and I would fight him and the district if they dropped the sport for
reasons of safety. It was about this time that the IHSA Executive Director
together with the Wisconsin High School Association Executive Director began a
push to drop pole vault and diving because of the �Potential for Injury�
in both sports. Both sports were on an �Endangered Sports� list. I wrote a
statement that diving may have the potential for injury but there was no
statistical evidence to prove that fact unlike pole vault, which had numerous
injuries. The real cause for concern was numerous shallow water diving injuries
from the side of the pool and not from the use of diving boards.
I was looking at the safety of the sport prior to my
school district�s inquiry. After a couple of years of accumulating safety
articles and statistical evidence that information had proved that I was
correct. �Diving was safer for divers than those watching them from the
bleachers.� All articles I sent for and received were passed on and soon my
administrator had the most complete Diving Safety file in the country.
Ultimately I approached the IHSA with all of this safety information. The
result was that my research saved Diving from the chopping block by the IHSA.
Wisconsin wasn�t so lucky. Diving there was no longer a high school sport and
it was reduced to an activity with no State high school status or recognition.
Diving boards were pulled out of hotel/motel swimming
pools because of liability issues and huge settlements that were being
assessed.
During this time frame US Diving hired Barb Gimmel in a
position to look into Diving Safety. I began sending her copies of the research
information. Eventually they hired a full time Safety Director and I continued
sending my information. Ultimately US Diving came out with its �Safety Position
Paper� based on all of the information I gave them which also led to their
Safety Certification Courses.
3. In the late 1980�s I was asked to serve as an
expert witness for a park district on the South side of Chicago. The incident
took place on a 3-meter board in a park district pool. The diver ran toward the
end of the board, stopped and at the same time turned around, lost his balance
as he tried to go back to his starting point and fell to the deck below
injuring himself. I was asked to go to the pool and look at their diving board.
I had no idea of what was to come because I had never done anything like this
before.
When I got to the pool it was closed because the outdoor
recreational season had ended. I went into the maintenance shop and told them
who I was. They were expecting me and took me to a room where a diving board
was placed on a workbench and a few sawhorses. The board had been painted two
different colors. There was a 6-inch square where they had scraped the paint
off near the water end of the board. I was told that the boy�s lawyer accused
the park district of improperly painting the surface, which caused it to be
slick and was a contributing factor in the boy�s injury. It was a Dura-flex
diving board.
The
first thing I did was ask for a bucket of water and while waiting I took my
shoes and socks off. I doused the entire board with the water and then walked
on it. I was trying to see if my feet would slip or slide. When I got to the
water end of the board, I tried to twist and turn my feet. I had seen
self-resurfaced boards before. Some felt very gritty until they got wet and
then it was like ice-skating. This one had a very sandy, nonskid surface. I
thought there was no way anyone could slip on that surface. In my mind their
maintenance crew did a great job.
After examining the diving board, person from Park
District Risk Management Agency (PDRMA) gave me some papers with 13 different
charges from the boy�s lawyer. Whoever wrote the charges couldn�t count. There
were only 12. I addressed most of the charges. The ones I couldn�t address
pertained to the pool operation since the pool had already closed for the
season. After a few of hours of testifying and being recorded I was finished. 3
years later I received a letter thanking me for my efforts and that the judge
ruled in favor of the park district. That was my only case and we won.
4. Somewhere in the early 1980�s I began to do
some clinics for the officials that related to judging. These included
discussions and videos to demonstrate what deficiencies they had. I did this
because I came to realize that diving was only one event and our officials were
people who did not have much exposure to the sport. They were good people with
the best intentions but had little experience in diving. Much of the testing
for the officials only covered the management of the event with little emphasis
on judging it.
My intention for doing these clinics was to educate and
at least close
the gap in scoring between
officials and coaches. I also had an ulterior motive, which was to get the
officials to a point where they could recognize inflated scoring at various
sectionals and maybe eventually they would be a little more vocal when they saw
it happening. The officials did become better judges but their comfort level to
be more vocal at sectional sites has yet to become a reality.
5. In the late 1980�s the safety of diving was
being questioned again. I knew that US Diving had been keeping their own
records on injuries so I decided to look at this issue from a recreational
point of view. Local pools are the places that many kids in the past were
exposed to diving. That was still the case for the grass root and junior
programs under US Diving.
I found that old studies were still being cited and diving
boards were disappearing locally. Most incidents again were shallow water
however incidents from the use of diving boards began to pop up. Injuries from
the use of diving boards occurred in residential and apartment complex pools
not in public/municipal pools. They almost mirrored those of the motel pools
from the 1970�s where the boards had been removed. Most of these diving board
injuries occurred because the diver over jumped the deepest part of the pool
and landed in the shallow end. The municipal (public) pools where the diving
envelope is much larger didn�t have those types of injuries. Some 80% of those
injuries involved alcohol use. NSPI regulated the residential pool industry and
their diving injuries were added to the NEISS and other reporting agencies,
which led to all of this confusion. NSPI appeared to need this confusion
because they had a pending lawsuit that would eventually cost them a fortune.
I wrote many articles and papers some of which were
placed in the libraries of the National Safety Council and the largest Risk
Management Association in North America (PRIMA). I even gave US Diving this
information and they did nothing with it. Did this stop the disappearance of
diving boards? I just don�t know at this time but at least I tried to do
something.
6. After arguing with US Diving and its position
on coaches, certifications and the rising costs to be a member I decided to
look elsewhere for alternatives. I eventually contacted Bobby Dodd at the AAU
and was referred to Todd Proa. After a couple of years of e-mailing, diving was
accepted back into the AAU at its National Convention and insurance became
available through them. I was the first to introduce the AAU back to Illinois
by hosting a contest. 3 years later the AAU ran their first National
Championship with over 8,000 members/divers. We only needed 2,000 to do it. The
alternative I searched for is now a reality and a huge success.
I need to thank my wife and kids for allowing me to spend
as much time as I did with all of these endeavors. Many hours went into these
efforts including late nights and weekends. Without their encouragement and
understanding I don�t believe that I would have accomplished half of what I
did. I surely will miss the sport and the people associated with it.