High Life: A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Getting Down : Scuba Team Takes Over PE Classes to Teach Teens How to Dive Safely for Fun and Exercise

There are no basketballs, footballs, baseballs or soccer balls in sight. There aren’t any softballs, golf balls, tennis balls, volleyballs or water polo balls, either.

Yes, this is a physical education class, but there aren’t any games to be found.

Fun, yes; games, no.

Nearly 4,000 students in about 40 high schools throughout the Southland each year are choosing to learn to scuba dive as part of their PE requirement.

Each participating school is visited once a year by a teaching team from Scuba Safety Inc. in La Mirada, which has been providing school-site instruction for the past 14 years.

“We are a school of scuba education, not a dive shop,” said John Sims, general manager of Scuba Safety Inc. “We go to groups of people and provide instruction . . . from Thousand Oaks to Palm Springs.”

Kim Cocktrell, a freshman at Orange High School, recently completed the five-week course. “I took the class for the experience of scuba diving and being able to use it in the future,” she said. The basics of diving are taught both in and out of the water, as a day of classroom preparation is usually followed by a day of practical experience in the pool.

“I enjoy working with students and teaching them the useful skill of diving,” said Rick Lebel, one of 20 Scuba Safety instructors. He was recently assisted pool-side at Orange High by Tim Holterman, 18, a graduate of Edison High.

In addition to the basics, students are taught underwater signals, the skills needed to figure out depth in the water and safety rules.

“It’s interesting to learn how to scuba dive and be able to communicate under water,” Orange senior Melissa Levers said.

In classes of 25, students practice skills in the shallow end of the pool until the instructors believe they are ready to go off the deep end.

“When I was coming up from the deep end of the pool, I thought I was getting the bends,” said first-time diver Cedric Ward, a junior at Orange. “But I was just panicking.”

No ocean dives are required to earn PE credit, but if students want to be certified, they’ll need to take to the sea.

“I plan to get full certification in scuba diving so I can dive at any time,” said Sean Demarit, an Orange freshman.

A limited certification requires a student to make two ocean dives with an instructor. Full certification--which means a diver can dive anywhere and at any time without an instructor present--can be gained after five ocean dives and six to eight hours of extra training.

Limited certification through Scuba Safety Inc. costs $65 and full certification costs $165.

“It’s really a cool class,” Ward said. “I can’t wait to get my certification, even though it’s going to cost me some money.”

Many of the students say that weekend dives, which are offered at discount prices, are the highlight of the class. Students meet early in the morning at Corona del Mar State Beach, a south-facing beach with relatively small waves and clear water.

There, they dive and then later talk about what they’ve seen under water.

“When I was diving at Corona del Mar,” said Demarit, recalling an unusual experience, “a big crab got on the back of my pack, crawled over my back and was right up at my mask before I saw it.”

But Levers said, “I haven’t seen anything really strange, but seeing the other people I was diving with, it seemed strange to see them underwater, breathing and being able to move.”