A dive meet is possibly one of the last places one would expect to hear the word “bingo.” Yet it’s announced into the humid air of the Willis R. Casey Aquatic Center every time the judges are unanimous on a dive’s score. 

At meets, Enloe divers receive scores based on the difficulty levels and executions of their dives. In addition to practicing their dives at training, it’s common for athletes on the dive team to have backgrounds in other sports, and they can apply the skills learned there on the diving boards. 

Junior Vanessa Rectanus said she dances in addition to being on the dive team. The flexibility afforded to her by dance is also applicable to diving, she said, and the turning and flipping in the air is a shared experience between the sports. 

“Spotting going into the water for a flip is very similar to spotting how you would a turn, so that’s been helpful,” Rectanus added. 

Captain and senior Nick Sweet said playing baseball kept him fit and in shape, making diving easier. 

The Enloe divers also have vastly different experiences with dive itself. 

“I wouldn’t say any two people on the team are exactly the same skill level,” said junior Thor Ziobro.

“We have people like me who have just started,” Rectanus added, while “[Sweet] has committed to go D1 for dive.”

Ziobro has been on the Enloe dive team for three years and a club dive team for 10, while Sweet has been on the school team for all four years and a club team for six. The two have been diving together outside of school since 2019, Ziobro said. 

Rectanus, on the other hand, is a newcomer to the sport and is in her first year on the team. 

Often, “you decide what your sport is when you’re in elementary [or] middle school and kind of just have to stick with it,” she said, “so I’m enjoying trying a new sport” in high school. Dive specifically is “one of the most common sports to pick up later,” Rectantus said, “so there are a lot of new divers.”

While Sweet has had much more experience, he still finds the sport daunting. “The idea of doing a new dive is really fun to me,” he said, “and it’s always fun to do something you’re scared of.” 

The community of Wake County divers is another reason that many Enloe divers find joy in the sport. 

“All of Wake County dive practices together,” Rectanus said, “which I have found fun because you’re still encouraging people as you’re competing because they become your friends.”

Sweet and Ziobro mentioned their friends on other schools’ dive teams, too. The other Wake County divers are “always fun to talk to and catch up with,” Sweet said. 

At Enloe, the dive team is a subsection of the school’s larger Swim & Dive team. 

“Swim is really the main sport. Dive is secondary,” Ziobro said, adding that this makes it harder for the divers to bond among themselves. 

Despite this, Sweet said that a bond exists within the team. With seven people, Enloe’s dive team is significantly smaller than many other athletic teams at the school. 

The smaller size “makes us closer,” he said. “Since there’s less of us, we spend more time around each other.”

Sweet said the team has ranged from three to five people over the years, so seven divers is actually more than in most seasons. 

Since the team practices with other Wake County schools, they share a Wake County coach, Coach Wesendunk. At practices, Coach Wesendunk gives everyone feedback, Rectanus said, while Enloe coordinator Coach Buzek gives Enloe athletes personal feedback. Coach Buzek also acts as the team’s cheerleader, Sweet added. 

The team practices between two and four times a week, Rectanus said, with some practices on Saturday mornings. Practices entail both working on dive preparations on the ground and trying the dives in the water, she added, and no practice can exceed an hour and 15 minutes.

Everyone progresses at their own pace, Rectanus said, so “some people are working on a front dive and some are working on getting three full flips in.” 

Meets are more ordered. “There’s a list order, and everybody just does their first dive, and then we go through that list… until everyone’s done six,” Sweet said. “And then we take all the scores and compare them.”

The six dives are a front, back, inward, reverse, twisting and one required dive that changes every meet, Rectanus said. Each diver must do the required dive and four of the other options, so they can repeat one category. 

Divers can fail, or scratch, one dive, she added, but if you “scratch two, you get disqualified.” 

However, Rectanus said, “it’s not as uncommon as you’d think to fail.” 

Dives are classified by whether the diver’s hands or feet are supposed to hit the water first, she said. A diver fails if their feet enter first when it was supposed to be their hands, or vice versa. 

“Even if I were to over-rotate [on a front flip] and do an amazing one and a half, it still wouldn’t count,” Rectanus added, because her hands would land first instead of her feet. “I have to do the dive that they announced.”

Certain dives require the diver’s hands to be by their sides, she said, so “if you land with your hands up instead of down by your side, that’s also a failed dive.”

Rather than shunning a diver when they flop at a meet, Recatanus said, everyone claps. 

It “sounds really weird and passive aggressive,” she added, “but the idea is that it just makes it less awkward for that person. It’s gonna happen to everyone. It doesn’t matter. You’ll clap, acknowledge the fact, and then just move on because everyone will do it at some point… Nobody expects everyone to be perfect.” 

While not perfect, the small, diverse team is successful, with Rectanus, Sweet and Ziobro all placing at the CAP8 championships. 

Enloe Dive will return to the boards at 8:00 a.m. on Jan. 29 at Pullen Aquatic Center for their regional meet.