Morton West Diving Team

Franchesca Hernandez, Writer

Do you have a passion for acrobatics and or being in the water? If your answer was yes, check out the Morton West Diving Team.

Morton West has a diving team that has been around since the 1970s and the current coach for the team is Mr. Michael McGlennon. Some may think that diving and swimming are the same sport, however, if you join the swim team what you will be looking forward to is swimming laps. On the other hand, joining the diving team will be an experience of jumping off a board while performing acrobatics. Even though the sports are different,  the two teams are combined as a whole team for practices and meets. The only time swimming and diving aren’t a team is when they go to competitions.

This diving is a one-of-a-kind sport since it takes confidence and self-belief when jumping off a diving board to do the maneuvers. The sport is essentially getting on the diving board platform and jumping off, but what most people don’t know is that jumping off is the hardest part of doing the dive. As said by Julissa Lopez a sophomore on the diving team, jumping off takes a lot of courage to do. As you’re making your dive you are to perform an acrobatic move in mid-air. Given that the divers do have to land in the water,  the appropriate attire to wear is a swimsuit. Since the material of the swimsuit isn’t cotton based, the nylon blend allows for more movement. The swimsuits give divers less weight when they land in the water making it easier to land and swim. Another essential piece of their attire is a swim cap, for divers with long hair, it is best to have their hair contained in a way as flying hair can cause a perfectly good dive to go bad.

Morton Diver Takes a Leap

Since diving is more of an individual sport to go to the State competition, Julissa Lopez states that “I expect to get more dives to better my technique.” She also stated that she would like to get more dives which are necessary to be able to participate in the competitions. Now how exactly do you qualify to compete at state championships? A diver with enough dives has the opportunity to compete. Once they compete they get judged individually and whoever gets the most points will be the one going to state out of the entire team.  The one individual teammate then goes and makes dives and gets scored. The best-scored diver is the one that wins the championships. During the 1970s and 1980s when the team was first made, the school had a lot of victories due to the dedication of the team during competitions and state championships.

“The team divers have recently been to sectionals scoring 6th and 7th place,” McGlennon stated. This also includes going to sectionals and being close to State by 30 points. Now that you have gotten a feeling of what it’s like to be on the Morton West diving team, maybe you will take a chance and join.