Swimming and diving are like awkward cousins at a family reunion. You may both share a grandmother, but outside of that you can’t hold a conversation longer than 30 seconds before running out of things to say.
Swimming and diving’s common ancestry can be traced back to the pool they practice and compete in, but that is where their family resemblance ends.
With the recent ending of the 2015 swim season, it is now time that swimming and diving part ways as unlikely friends and begin being treated as individual sports.
While both sports require tremendous amounts of athleticism, the type of athleticism differs. Swimming is a speed sport more similar to track and diving is a more akin to gymnastics. Swimmers tend to have longer, looser, and more endurance-oriented muscles, divers then tend to have tighter, more compact, aerobatic muscles.
Yet NCAA insists on cramming swimming and diving into the same meets.
Have you ever been in the middle of a hockey game and seen the rink cleared for a round of figure skating routines? Or seen a wrestler have to clear the mat during a match for a rhythmic gymnast? These situations sound absurd. Despite sharing the same rink or gym the listed sports have nothing in common. Yet swimming and diving are forced to compete together because we share a pool.
There is one sport besides swimming and diving that combines different events, and that’s track and field.
Like swimmers and divers, track and field athletes are built fundamentally different from one another. No one would mistake a champion thrower for a champion long distance runner.
Unlike swimming and diving, however, sprinters and pole-vaulters can compete at the same time.
As a collegiate swimmer, I find no joy in sitting on a cold deck, silently for two 40-minute sessions of diving, only to warm up all over again for my upcoming races. Similarly, I can imagine that no divers enjoy sitting watching swimmers splash between two walls for hours, while they twiddle their thumbs.
The same logic should follow for swimming and diving as it does other sports. The sports should either be completely separate events, or conducted so that they don’t impede with one another. They are different sports, and should be treated as any other athletic event — as the main event of the competition. Swimmers already compete with the other swim teams, why force them to compete with the divers for attention too?
Perhaps a more critical flaw than the disruption of the meet in the swimming and diving is the combination of scores.
Until championship meets at the end of the season, swimming and diving are scored together. This makes about as much sense as determining a tie in a hockey game, not by a shootout, but by choosing the best figure skating routine.
Diving is treated just like another event at a swim meet. When the opposing team had 3 divers, they are automatically awarded nine points for first place, four points for second place, and three points for third place in both the one-meter and the three-meter boards, leaving us 32 points behind from the start. We were being punished for something we have no control over, constantly trying to play catch up. It got to be so frustrating, girls on the team were asking the coach if they could cannonball off the three-meter in order to pick up the last-place finishing points.
No harm would come by separating the scores of the two teams. By allowing one swim team to win, but the opposing diving team to win prevents teams from being penalized for uncontrollable factors. Additionally it allows teams to evaluate themselves solely on their own merits, creating an accurate evaluation of where the team stands within the season.
Swimming and diving should become independent and separate sports — before I am compelled to cannonball off the three-meter.
