Dumais Trio Perfects the Drive N’ Dive : Junior Olympics: Brothers qualify for championships despite daily journey of 136 miles for practice.

They might have a future in law if this emphasis on accuracy keeps up. Ask one of the Diving Dumais Brothers a question and the other two will interject their version of the way it really happened.

Since Justin, Troy and Brice Dumais are often confined to one place for a long time, you have to feel for their parents, Kathy and Mark Dumais.

Driving from Ventura to Pasadena every day is tough enough without three boisterous boys in the back seat, not to mention 5-year-old Dwight and 7-year-old Leanne.

The Dumais family travels 136 miles round-trip six to seven days a week for diving practice at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, which opened last summer.

This weekend they are competing in the National Junior Olympic Zone D Championships in their home pool. Not that their sibling rivalries need it, but they are competing against one another in the age 13-and-under division.

On Friday, the first day of competition, all three qualified for the National Junior Olympic Diving Championships, July 24-28 in Clayton, Mo., with a top-five finish on the 3-meter springboard. Troy, 11, won with a score of 345.65 points, including a back dive in the pike position which earned a score of 8 1/2. Justin, 12, finished third with 300.65 points in a routine highlighted by a 7 1/2 on his full twisting 1 1/2 somersault.

Brice, 10, who earned his first berth in the national championships, tallied 283.45 points for a fourth-place finish, including a 7 on his 2 1/2 somersault.

Troy started the family’s love affair with spinning and somersaulting when he was 4. “I was swimming in the Ventura College swimming pool and I saw diving boards and I wanted to know what it was and how to do it,” Troy said. “I went off it and I thought it was fun.”

When Brice and Justin, who had goofed off on a tiny board in a neighbors’ back yard, grew bored at Troy’s meets, they decided to join him on the Buena diving team. Brice quit his first winter. Despite the family’s attempts to compensate for the lack of a whirlpool by filling a plastic garbage bag with hot water, he was too cold between dives.

The following summer he was back in the trio for good. It wasn’t exactly what Mark Dumais had in mind.

“My dad wanted us to learn three things,” Brice said. “To swim, to ride a bike and to swing on the swings.”

In the summer time, the Dumaises’ fascination with heights and headstands takes an awesome toll.

By 10:30 a.m. the Diving Dumaises are deck side preparing for a 2 1/2-hour practice while their younger siblings take swimming and diving lessons. After a two-hour lunch break, they are back on the boards from 3-5:30 p.m.

During the school year, the brothers ride their bikes home from school and pile into the car by 3:15. While Kathy is stuck in traffic, they figure their math problems and work on their spelling. After a two-hour practice, they are back in the car for an equally long journey home.

“It is worth it to us,” Troy said, “because if we win nationals, everything will be paid for us by the Southern Pacific Assn.”

If the boys seem concerned with money at a young age, it is because diving is an expensive sport. They buy their own sweat suits and swim suits with an allowance their father pays them based on the scores they receive in competition.

Although diving consumes their days, the Dumaises are not one-dimensional. Brice collects dinosaur, turtle and G.I. Joe figures and enjoys drawing. Justin assembles model rockets, jets and cars, collects baseball cards and plays Nintendo and Troy likes to go outside and ride his bike and shoot baskets.”

Diving’s main attraction is the thrill. The Dumaises have hit their heads on the board and Justin chipped a tooth, but they remain unfazed. Not even their first trip off the 10-meter platform nor their first handstand on the platform daunted the Dumaises.

“It looked like fun,” Justin said. “Everybody else was going off and it wasn’t fun to be left out.”

Even the toughest dives on the boys’ list, the reverse 2 1/2 somersault, is no cause for nerves. “Diving gives me a chance to be free,” Brice said. “Since I don’t get to sky-dive, it gives me a feeling of soaring.”

The “most” fun isn’t on the list. It is a front somersault off the 10-meter platform that the brothers throw in tandem.

Coach Van Austin keeps the trio’s success in perspective. Of the 28 national age-group champions Austin has coached, 12 of them were 13 and under, and of those, only two stayed with the sport through the senior national level.

“A national under-13 championships and a quarter won’t necessarily buy you a cup of coffee,” Austin said. “My job is to keep it fun and keep them interested.”

With the Dumaises, in particular, he tries to cool the sibling competition. The driving alone could make for routinely bad days, but for now, the Dumaises will stay with it because they believe it instills discipline.

“It shows them,” Kathy said, “that it takes a lot of work to do something well.”