Diving is one sport at Eastern that seems to be over-shadowed by the domination of the swim team.

But sometimes it is the divers that can make all the difference in the meet.

The men’s and women’s swim team may not be as successful if it wasn’t for the the divers’ additional points. Nevertheless, they continue to remain in the background and out of the spotlight of the swimming pool.

The men’s divers, senior Zach Miller and freshman Danny Scheck, are the 1-2 combination that was needed this semester. For the first four meets this year, Miller was the only diver on the men’s roster.

“I used to be a sprint freestyle in high school,” Scheck said. “And then I switched to the diving team because I saw that we lost points in that part of the meets.”

Scheck said that the transition from sprinter to diver was not as easy as he anticipated.

“I could point my toes – I could do all that stuff,” Scheck said. “I could just jump off the board and do flips and stuff off the board.”

The women’s diving team consists of freshmen Susie Krecth, Lindsae Baldes and Angelina Arnold, and sophomore Maggie Cranrath. They are a young but talented group of girls that are going to be the diving squad for the next couple of years.

In previous years, Scheck and Baldes were aware of some distinctions between the diving team and the swim team, but not any more.They both feel that whatever happened in the past with subsequent teams is the past, and they feel they are part of a new team dynamic.

“In high school, I was a swimmer too, so I made it possible for the divers and the swimmers to be best of friends,” Baldes said.

The amount of time teams spend together in and out of practice refutes the possibility of any sort of team break-down. The teams are unaffected by the stigma of two separate teams or two separate entities, between the swim team verses the diving team, and if there was a hint of that, Baldes said that she would have noticed.

“I think if there was, I would have something to say about it.” Baldes said.

The life of the swimmer remains a topic of discussion, but the divers seem to float in the waters of unpopularity.

But the hard work and dedication is apparent throughout the small staff of divers.

“Some people say our practices consist of jumping off a board and flipping,” Baldes said. “It’s harder than most people think. It’s killer.”