Diving and Resilience

Jack finished a great dive season this week with a pretty disappointing end.  He missed the All City Dive final by 1.9 points, placing 18 when the top 16 made it to the final round.  He was SO SAD because last year, he placed 9th and was 4th going into finals.

Jack is a really good diver, but he gets in his own head and has a tendency to do better in practice and warm ups than he does at the meet.  Which makes total sense, of course, because individual sports are scary and hard, and diving is, I think, particularly nerve-wracking because no matter how good you are, you can for sure still get hurt anytime you jump off the board.

My friend Jenny wrote this great blog post about resilience and how we basically demand it from kids all the time.  Just by asking them to participate in organized sports, we ask them to set themselves up for failure and then jump up and do it again like it's no big deal.  I was happy to read her post before the meet yesterday, but it made me appreciate even more the courage Jack showed all year.  It's a great post, and you can read it RIGHT HERE.

I was a national champion in college (not in a sport-- HA HA HA that would be hilarious-- in speech) and a state champion, too, and I want my kids to know what it feels like to be the very best at what you love. Because it feels awesome.  But, more than that, I want them to keep trying to be their best (and also THE best) again and again, and that resilience is really something to be proud of.

Jack won 2 dual meets this year, and he was so happy to add those blue ribbons to his collection.  I can't wait to see how his season unfolds next summer.

Working on his double, one of thee new, high-difficulty dives he added this year.  he also added a couple of lower-scoring dives, like an inward.

Soaking up the last few days of dive team with a tie-dye parrty

Ready to dye

Before the meet, sporting his tie-dyed shirt and his All-City hat

Where did he want to go after not making the finals?  Back to the pool of course, where he immediately got to work on an inward flip.

Closing out the night in our favorite place.