Raising the Degree of Difficulty
The degree of difficulty minimum has been raised for a female diver to enter the National Championships. In order for this diver to compete at that level, she must be able to do some pretty big optional dives. Some coaches are upset and believe that many girls will not be able to enter that contest which would make it a pretty small event (crash contest?).
I have many concerns with this issue. Our divers have not competed very well because they are not performing their dives very well. If they were having difficulty performing to the standard we had, why would one consider raising that standard? A couple of analogies come to mind. Recently an education bill was enacted for the purpose of narrowing the gap between the poorer students and the others. The same holds true with many attempts to narrow the income gap between the rich and the poor. Both of these are lofty, idealistic goals but in reality everything that has been tried only seems to widen that gap even more. That's what I feel US Diving has done to our sport. Everything they have attempted to do has continued to widen the competitive gap between the rest of the world and us. It's a shame because the leadership doesn't see it that way.
The "expect more get more" theory is only successful if the expectation is reasonable and achievable. We still have the same divers with the same shaky basics yet the bar is raised to a height many of them won't be able to get over. It takes years to develop a diver that can compete well at the international level. By raising the bar the expectation is to get it all done immediately with these same divers. Raising that standard may further lower the quality of the dives they do. Anyhow, it's an unreasonable expectation and I believe will be doomed to failure. It's easy and quick to raise the standards but how many divers will be able to achieve them? An example of how to get the sort of improvement we want has already been demonstrated but US Diving seems to over-look or even ignore it.
How did the Chinese get an 11 year old girl to win a senior international tower event? That didn't happen overnight. Did they throw out all DD's and limit the kinds of dives they can do at that age? If they did, that 11 year old would not have been seen at that international level just as our 11 year olds aren't seen at that level. The diving table is open to them without restriction. USD closed the table because it didn't want the younger kids to develop bad habits while doing dives that someone considered were too hard for them. Apparently other countries are able to handle that concern without any problem. Canada allows their young divers to use the entire list of dives without limitations. US Diving simply implies that we just can't handle that.
Restricting the age group dive requirements for the last 10 to 12 years hasn't reduced the bad habits that our present senior divers are displaying. Nor has it produced the success that the leadership had hoped for. I believe our senior divers are displaying more bad habits than ever before. Those habits will not produce the desired results when they try to meet the new standard of difficulty. Their foundation is shaky and we still want them to do harder dives. This whole idea is like trying to build a skyscraper on a foundation designed for a one story house. It also seems to clash with the protection that was mandated for the younger divers when we don't allow them to do dives that someone considered too difficult for their skills and abilities. Our poor performance may only get worse because of the shaky fundamentals, which would seem to put them at greater risk of injury when attempting to beef up their list.
The leadership has fragmentized certain aspects of the sport so much so that it has led us to this problem. From beginning to end diving is and always has been a series of progressions and add ons. Educationally this idea has a much sounder basis because the divers are made aware of the need for a certain progression/skill for each dive they wish to try. For the younger kids, ours is only a skill mastery progression that has little connection to a dive. It's just some skill and the connection isn't there because they are not allowed to do a dive that this skill may relate to. It's almost like trying to explain the color red to someone who has been blind since birth. Without that connection, how can we expect them to understand or improve?
If we look at athletes that are highly successful, the above example can be demonstrated. They all seem to demonstrate the same characteristics. They are highly motivated for self-improvement. They continually tax their skills and abilities, which means that they extend further beyond their comfort zones. They take risks. That is where improvement happens. Fundamentals are repeatedly revisited as they apply to those situations. We should begin teaching this concept at an early age rather than waiting for our kids to get older and stuck in a comfort zone they can't get out of.
What's going to happen when judging these harder dives? Judges will become more lenient on divers who do the big dives. These dives will not be judged on performance as stated in the rules but rather on dd. The results of these contests will have the diver with the highest dd winning not the best diver's performance in the competition. If and when this occurs, our system loses its credibility.
Our senior divers should be taking far more time and energy to master some of the basic skills that are expected of the entry-level divers. Their performance shows that the leadership's plan isn't working and their plan is part of the reason we can't compete with the rest of the world. I would suggest starting over with something that has produced the results we are expecting. (See the "Hobie Factor" on this site.) As long as we keep trying to add on to what has proven to be unsuccessful we will continue to be unsuccessful.