5.0

6.0

5.5

By Kim J. Harmon

Listen, I don’t know much about diving. I can’t tell the difference between a pike and a tuck and I have a hard time telling the difference between a back dive and an inward dive. But one thing I do know, oh yeah, I DO think I can score it pretty well.

With all due respect to the refs who REALLY know how to score diving, I have somehow – through some 14 years of standing on the pool deck watching thousands and thousands of dives – gained this uncanny ability to score a dive without knowing if the right dive was performed or if it was, in fact, even performed correctly.

Call it a knack, if you will.

Or a talent.

An aptitude.

A predisposition of sorts.

Diving is a lot like art, too, because even though I know next to nothing about art (although I DO know that Vincent Van Gogh hacked off part of his ear after a night of, shall we say, too much revelry), I do have a sense for what is good and what isn’t. Like, I can tell you that the Mona Lisa is a little bit of a better painting than Dogs Playing Poker . . . I just can’t say why.

So, on Wednesday, I decided to score the six dives of Newtown’s No. 1 diver, Alyssa von Oy, who, almost as a matter of routine, scores more than 200 points (it seems a bad day for her is when she scores only 205 points) and is a favorite to win not only a South-West Conference diving championship but also a CIAC Class L diving championship.

I scored all six dives, going up against three trained professionals.

And thank goodness those guys were there, too, because - heck - the only reason I even knew she did the dive she was supposed to is because the REAL judges did not deke her.

DIVE #1 – I throw up a 6.0 and here comes a 5.0, 4.5 and 6.0.

DIVE #2 – Not one of her best dives, but I score it a 5.0. The judges put up 4.0, 5.0, 3.0.

DIVE #3 – They are getting considerably tougher now, the first of three straight dives with a 2.4 degree of difficulty. Von Oy hits the water strong and I say 5.5. The judges say 5.5, 5.0, 5.0.

DIVE #4 – A little shaky, but I still hand out a 5.0, while the judges are slightly less enthusiastic with their praise by handing out a 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.

DIVE #5 – A good dive, good enough to elicit a 5.5 from me and good enough to get a 5.0, 4.5 and 6.0 from the judges.

DIVE #6 – The final dive, a 2.3 degree of difficult, she hits it strong and I hand her a 5.5. The judges nearly concur, awarding von Oy a 5.5, 5.0, 5.0.

I was pretty much on the money, although I can see I have a tendency to score a dive on the higher end than the lower end (only one judge scored a dive higher than I scored it) because I’m a positive sort of guy and that’s all there is to it.

And please don’t ask me why a dive was a 5.5 or a 6.0 or a 4.5 or whatever, because I don’t know.

I just know it is, that’s all.