In short season, he sets new mark for 6 dives, huge new mark for 11 dives
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – Ocean City High School senior Luke Gallagher said he “got a little lucky this year.”
Luck may have very little to do with it.
With his 2021 sports season shortened to just four meets, Gallagher broke both school diving records in the span of two days.
The Ocean City resident started diving his freshman year at OCHS after doing some gymnastics in middle school. He joined the swim team and decided that diving looked like more fun than swimming.
In his final season, on March 23, Gallagher broke the six-dive record with a cumulative score of 233 points. The former record was 214 points.
Two days later, on March 25, he broke the 11-dive record with a cumulative score of 428 points – more than 100 points better than the standing record of 322 points.
He acknowledged how far he has come since his freshman year under coach Kate Musick and the following three years with diving coach Amy Kohl.
“I was talking to my freshman year coach who stopped by a couple of the meets this year,” Gallagher said. “She was telling me how crazy it is to see that difference for all of us, the whole team has improved.”
“Luke has come a long way,” Kohl said. “This is my third year coaching so I met him as a sophomore and he worked really hard in the short time we had at practice (this season). I know he was working on a club team in Princeton for a little bit. His hard work really paid off. He was able to break both of those records, which was really impressive.
“From the first year I met him to this year he has excelled tremendously,” she added. “His form really came along. When I first met him he had the height for his dives but was lacking that fine-tuned shaping so I really saw that progress and develop into his senior year.”
Gallagher started gunning for both records last year when he started working on his repertoire of 11 different dives that he needed to qualify for the state championships. He explained there are five diving categories – forward dives, back dives, inward, reverse and twisting – and he had to do two dives from four of the categories and three dives from the other in the 11-dive meets.
In the first three meets of the season, he went after the six-dive record. The first meet, he was 12 points away from the record. “The second meet rolls around and I was 3 points away. Then the third meet, my last chance to do the six-dive, I broke the record by 19 points.
“It was a good day,” he said.
“You can do 11 at any meet so I wanted to do it at least once,” he said. “I restricted myself to three chances at the six-dive record and one 11-dive meet. If I didn’t end up breaking either of the records, I still wanted to see how I was doing this season with the six-dive and the 11. I wanted to make sure I got at least one of them in each time.”
In that final meet, not only did he break the record, he smashed it.
Gallagher said he was surprised and thrilled by his score in the 11-dive meet, but his family “might have been more excited than me, honestly. They knew I’ve been wanting to break it.”
Gallagher is the youngest of three brothers and serves on the Ocean City Beach Patrol with them and his father, Paul. His mom, another dive fan, is Margaret.
This was a short season and the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the state diving meet in 2020 and 2021. “They cancelled states for this year so season ended last week with normal meets,” Gallagher said in an interview last week. “I didn’t get to do anything outside regional competitions, which is upsetting.”
He made the most of his time in his home pool and on a club.
Divers are allowed to practice on the board only during their season, but Gallagher worked on a club team called the Princeton Tigers Aquatic Club under the head Princeton University diving coach and volunteer Daniel Fectau. Students are allowed to practice on club teams year-round.
“I’m able to do that all year long and now that I’m pursuing college (diving) I’ll be doing it all year long,” he said. He is headed to Towson University, a Division I school near Baltimore. He is going to be diving for Towson’s team while studying athletic training or secondary math education.
“I’m thrilled. I’m so excited,” he said about his upcoming college career. He said students at Towson will have in-person classes and full on-campus housing, unlike what many students experienced over the past year and a half in their educations.
In the near term, he is looking forward to the near future when full-time in-person learning renews at OCHS. “I’m excited to see everyone and be together with everyone,” he said. “It’s been so long. It’s definitely weird walking down the hallways and not seeing everyone I’m used to seeing. I’m excited that I’ll have that back.”
The dives
Divers get scored on multiple aspects, with judges looking at form, tightness, technique, height, how close they are to the board and their entry into the water. To get the point total for the dive, it is multiplied by the degree of difficulty.
Gallagher explained the simplest dive is a forward dive. “You just go off the diving board and enter on your hands. There are no somersaults or anything. It’s just up and down,” he said.
“My most difficult dive is probably an inward one and a half somersault. You’re standing backward on the end of the board and when you go up into the air you flip toward the board and do one complete flip and then another and enter on my hands.”
He said that ends up being his highest scoring dive “because it has a high degree of difficulty and they multiply the judges’ score by the degree of difficulty and I end up getting pretty high scores on that because it is one of my best dives.”
The degree of difficulty is a 2.2, he said, compared to a 1.3 or 1.4 for a simple front dive. The difficulty is often measured by how many twists or somersaults are in the dive.
“It’s a little scary. I wouldn’t say it’s the most fun one. It’s definitely a little nerve-racking,” he said about that dive.
“I’d say my most fun dive is one of my back twisting dives. It’s called a back one and a half somersault with a half twist. That’s probably my favorite. It’s a very fast dive. As soon as you’re in the air you’re twisting and then flipping and then you’re in the water,” Gallagher said.
Although Gallagher attributed his new records in part to luck, coach Kohl explained that it takes hard work to be a good diver.
The first thing required, she said, “is dedication. The second one, I’d say, is confidence.
“It doesn’t matter how good you are at flipping and twisting. When you learn something new, it’s not like riding a bike. If you’ve never done it before, it takes time to get used to it, to click. You have to stay committed,” Kohl said. “And then confidence because it definitely is a mind sport. When I say that I mean it could be fearful for some. It has that different element of being unique. And then as far as physical skills you need the endurance, especially for the 11-dive. To be able to do that is a huge challenge because you have to do all five of the categories.
To do the six-dive you only have to do four of the five.”
She said it is a feat in itself to perform an 11-dive list.
“It takes a lot of body control. You have to be able to know what your body’s doing and being aware of where you’re at, especially if you’re doing a front double. …. That’s what separates a good diver from a great diver, being able to have that control,” Kohl said. “Luke really progressed from when I saw him his sophomore year to his senior year, getting all those fine details perfected.” Those details include being aware of the small things such as hand position and having toes pointed.
Kohl said the diving program itself continues to progress. The team had 16 divers this year, including seven seniors, three juniors, a sophomore and five freshmen “so the team is going to continue and grow.” Some of the oldest and youngest newcomers did well this season, including one senior who never did diving before but was able to do a six-dive list and a freshman who completed an 11-dive list, also without prior diving experience.
Kohl sees good things to come in the future. “They’ll continue to extend past my expectations.”
She is going to miss her seniors, including Gallagher, who’s also a star in the school musical.
“Luke is great kid all around. He’s very versatile.”