After a Bad Plunge, Williams Just Dives Back Into the Sport

All athletes go through slumps, those seemingly endless phases of frustration when nothing goes right.

Quarterbacks lose their zip. Batters go zero-for-everything. Runners trudge along as though every yard was a mile.

With injuries, you can blame the body. It was weak, you say. It gave in before I did. But with slumps, you’re dealing with the mind. The brain battles itself, and all you can do is wait it out. There is no quick fix, nothing you can eat, drink or buy.

A little less than a year ago, Zach Williams of Irvine High School was on top of the diving world. He won the Southern Section 4-A title as a freshman, edging sophomore teammate Chris Vonk.

A week later, Williams was competing for the Mission Viejo Nadadores at the prestigious Pacific Coast Invitational dive meet at Seattle. He wowed the crowd with a near-perfect performance, placing first in the 14-15 age group in the one-meter, three-meter and platform events.

Most impressive, though, was later that day, he placed third in the senior division on the three-meter and platform, fourth overall on the one-meter.

The diving community had a Zach Attack. Fans praised him, more experienced divers shook their heads in disbelief. Williams felt invincible. He returned home with his confidence humming, his ego on overdrive.

Buoyed by his performance at Seattle, Williams attempted a back 3 1/2 off the 10-meter platform during a practice with the Nadadores. What happened is described by divers as “getting lost,” which is a notch or two more frightening than getting lost in the parking lots of South Coast Plaza during after-Christmas sales.

He hit the water, landing flat on his back.

“I took a good whack,” said Zach.

As his back and legs turned black and blue, his normally courageous outlook did too, and understandably so. For those who won’t so much as ride the Skyway tram at Disneyland because of a fear of heights, imagine standing on the edge of a platform nearly 33 feet above the water. Now, all you need to do is fling your body into space and turn 3 1/2 backward somersaults before you hit the water at 33 m.p.h. No problem.

Williams, who admits “every once in a while I look down from the platform and go ‘Whoa!’ ” says his reluctance to try the dive from that height again baffles him.

“I don’t really understand it,” he says. “I try to get over it, but I still have worries about it. I scared myself real bad.”

Fear toyed with his confidence for weeks. At the junior nationals in August, Williams . . . well, he cringes at the memory.

“I didn’t do too well,” he says.

Actually, he placed third on the three-meter and fourth on the one, both satisfying finishes. But the platform event, once his speciality, was his undoing. He and his coaches originally planned for him to do a 2 1/2 pike off the five-meter board. But Williams decided at the last minute to go with a front 3 1/2 off the 10-meter. He hadn’t practiced the dive but wanted to go for broke. He didn’t tell his coaches of his change in plans.

When his name was called, he climbed to the top of the platform.

Then he climbed back down.

“I was scared I wouldn’t be able to get the dive off,” he said sadly. “I crawled back down. . . . It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life.”

His parents and coaches were shocked. He was devastated. He took a month off, hoping time would heal his hurt. Thoughts of quitting fluttered in his mind. He would do other things.

Williams, a sweet-mannered boy who rarely loses his smile, doesn’t live solely for diving. He collects baseball cards. He has an iguana named “Wirt.” He gets straight As, thanks to his alarm clock’s 5 a.m. wake-up call for homework. He wants to go to Stanford and be a surgeon like his father.

And he plays the violin. Not occasionally, but every night before bed and every morning. He has played since he was 2 1/2. He loves Mozart and Tchaikovsky and, at 15, he isn’t afraid to say so.

Williams began focusing on diving again late last year when tragedy struck. He was playing baseball with friends when he heard the news: Vonk, his high school and Nadadore teammate, had been killed in an automobile

accident.

Williams rode his bike home as fast as he could. He said he panicked, but he doesn’t know why. Nor, he says, does he understand why Vonk’s sudden death set him back in his diving.

His coaches say he’s going through a phase and that he needs to work through it. They say they know he has exceptional talent, but his lack of confidence has put his success in a holding pattern. They remind him it’s not always easy to be a champion.

Although he and Vonk weren’t all that close, Williams looked up to him. It was Vonk’s fearlessness, Williams says, that he admired most. Williams tells of a senior meet where Vonk pulled off a back 2 1/2 dive--one he had learned just days earlier--off the 10-meter platform.

“He ended up placing in the top four,” Williams said, proud to detail his friend’s accomplishments. “And he got to go to Germany, too.”

Williams looks down at the floor, twisting and untwisting the towel at his side. He says he never realized how short life can be.

“Life can end at any time,” Williams says. “So it’s like, ‘Let’s have some fun.’ But then it’s hard, because I haven’t really accomplished anything yet.”

Barbie Ludovise’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Readers may reach Ludovise by writing The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, 92626 or calling 966-5847.