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Don’t dive into danger
Know the depth of the water before taking the plunge
By ANGIE TOOLE angiet@nwfdailynews.com
For decades, Si Howard of Destin has taken the plunge into cool blue pool waters and emerged unharmed.
Unless you count two minor mishaps back in his competition days of high school and college, two injuries that he said “were my own fault.”
“One time it was just stupid, the other time I just misjudged,” he said.
Stack that up against the hundreds of times he has lifted his arms, jumped skyward and plunged through the water, rolling up to break the surface without injury, and you can see that diving isn’t all the frightening thing it’s cracked up to be.
But the key, experts say, is to follow the safety rules and learn how to dive correctly.
In a recent report, the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry Rochester, N.Y., warned that diving injuries are an important cause of spinal cord injury in adolescents.
Each year, 10,000 to 20,000 people suffer spinal cord injury with adolescents from 15 to 19 years old at highest risk. Motor vehicle accidents and sports injuries — two-thirds of which are diving injuries — are the leading causes of SCI in this age group.
Boys, researchers found, are more likely than girls to get hurt this way, and alcohol use plays a significant role in a lot of these injuries.
Judy Keyser of Fort Walton Beach is in her 60s now, but as a young girl her parents enrolled her and her cousin in swimming lessons at her Michigan hometown’s YMCA.
They took lessons until they earned their teaching certificate.
“Diving is tricky. You cannot afford to be an adventurous when diving,” she said. “I have witnessed many people end up in wheel chairs for the rest of their lives, because of a stupid mistake in not investigating the place where they are diving. My own daughter and my cousin almost became one of those people.”
In most pool situations, you’re fairly safe, Keyser said. All you have to do is make sure the water is at least 8 feet deep wherever you dive. In natural conditions, like a lake or river, you can’t assume that the water has no shallow hazards like rocks or sand shelves.
Tonya Rasor of Niceville is a well-known local swimming instructor, who coaches the Maverick swim team at Hurlburt and gives private lessons throughout the area.
Her best advice is to make sure more kids are educated about diving.
“I do believe it is important to teach basic diving safety because often children want to dive for fun and will experiment on their own without realizing the risks of say, going head first (without arms extended up) or watching for the person before them to get out of the way,” she said.
“Some children are afraid, but they frequently overcome that with their excitement to try it when they watch other children having fun diving. Learning to swim is obviously the first goal in lessons, and I introduce sliding and then jumping in from the start, but diving is an important skill once the basics of swimming are learned.”
Rasor said that some diving basics are important even for the youngest swimmers.
“A common injury I see with jumping in is trying to turn around to grab the wall while still in the air,” she said. “Children need to be taught to jump in looking forward and then turn around once they are already in the water. Otherwise, they are at risk for splitting their chins or chipping their teeth on the pool ledge.”
