Closing his eyes, he takes three deep breaths into the humid, chlorinated air. The cacophony of echoes in the natatorium fades away, and upon opening his eyes, the sea of people becomes a blur of colors. Every single muscle in his body, down to his toes, tightens as he prepares the entry to his record breaking dive. As only a freshman, diver Dathan Schramm is already making waves.
Schramm set the 6 dive school record, meaning 6 dives in a dual meet, with a score of 298.15 at Plainfield, beating the previous record of 291.30. A couple weeks later, he broke his own school record with a score of 305.85 at a home meet against Avon.
“It wasn’t originally my goal because I really didn’t know what the school record was but I was really excited when I broke it,” Schramm said.
Many factors went into his record-breaking performance.
“You’re scored on the approach, like the hurdle,” Schramm said. “You’re scored on the confidence and power of your approach. You’re scored on the takeoff, like the direction you’re going. You can either go forward or up and you want to aim to go up. Then, the position of your flip, how clean you are, how tight it is. Then, the comeout sequence which is basically all about form, how clean you can be. And then of course the rip entry, which is how little of a splash you can make. Those are the five main aspects.”
Aside from breaking the school record, Schramm competed in USA Diving Junior Nationals, where he won many accolades, including placing 8th on tower, 11th on the three meter, and 15th on one meter.
“In high school, my goal this year is to make it to state,” Schramm said. “Outside of high school I do club diving so my goal is to make it to nationals again and maybe final in all three, which is like top 12.”
Despite his successes, he still finds a particular aspect of diving more challenging than the rest.
“I’ve really struggled with form, which is a major aspect of diving,” Schramm said. “I’ve struggled trying to stay clean throughout all my dives. My coaches are trying to work with me on it right now, but it’s been a really rough path.”
Schramm is still relatively new to the sport, as he only started diving three years ago and actually spent much of his life training for a different sport.
“I had a gymnastics background for about five years in elementary school,” Schramm said. “After I quit because the hours got so bad I started diving. I started diving in sixth grade for the middle school.”
Both diving and gymnastics require flipping and twisting your body in the air. Therefore, many skills overlap between the two sports such as balance, flexibility and body awareness.
“We practice a lot of flips,” Schramm said. “I also do platform for that [and] we do tower flips which are ground to ground flips. Diving is half dry land and half water. Outside the water you do a lot of abs, trampoline and dry board. [Dry board] is basically just diving boards on dry land.”
Throughout all of the stress and the intense training, diving is not only something that Schramm excels in, but something that he enjoys.
“I really like diving because it’s the camaraderie and the aspects of diving,” Schramm. “There are so many things going into it and there’s so much variety. And even in a singular dive, there’s just so much to look for. It just feels right.”
