Ivy Diving Champ Pam Stone

What freshman girl do you know who--I misses Eugene, her family's "fat, stupid" basset hound more than anything else from home?

I comes from Louisville, Ky. but can name you more old Chicago Cub stars than practically any Wrigley Field bleacher bum?

I once was kissed by the "huge, slobbery, slimy tongue" of Shamu the killer whale on a childhood visit to Sea World?

I earlier this year ended up with a friend's birthday cake smashed on the top of her head?

I motivated, without any coercion, the entire Harvard women's swimming team to sit and cheer her diving performance instead of resting between the trials and finals of this year's Ivy League Championship meet? (Swimmers notoriously hate diving!)

I rewarded those swimmers' loyalty with Harvard's only first-place finish in that meet?

I didn't even tell her roommates when she was voted Women's Ivy Athlete of the Week earlier this winter?

The answer is ... Pam Stone, freshman diver extraordinaire.

Her dramatic victory in the Ivy Championships and her selection as the Athlete of the Week have made her somewhat of a celebrity in Crimson sporting circles recently, but her infectious smile and good humor long ago endeared her to those fortunate enough to know her.

"I've enjoyed having her on my team as much as anyone I've ever coached," diving coach John Walker said unabashedly. "She's extremely humble, always considerate and just a lot of fun to be around. Put her on a board and she dives well, too," he adds as an afterthought.

Goodwill among members of the diving corps has been characteristic of the group during Coach Walker's highly successful seven-year tenure here. It didn't take long this year for a strong bond of friendship and mutual admiration to be formed between Pam and other members of the crew.

During the first week of practice (almost immediately after school began), Walker suggested to veterans Jamie Greacen and Steve Schramm that it was time they called a team meeting. "It was great," Pam recalled. "You know, it was the kind of meeting you have at Charlie's Kitchen."

By this time, Pam's diving peers were already impressed, not only with her talent but with her eager attitude toward diving and her ever-cheerful nature. These attributes fit in beautifully with the corps' group motivational and self-reinforcing character.

Indicative of Pam's perserverance and willpower has been her experience with a certain dive--a forward dive with one- and one-half somersaults in pike position--this year.

Diving scores are calculated by taking the judges' awards on a particular dive and multiplying their sum by the degree of difficulty (DD) pre-assigned by the national rules committee to that dive. The harder the dive, the higher the DD. DDs range from 1.0 to 3.0.

Divers constantly strive to improve their list--aerialist jargon for the dives that they perform in competition--so as to incorporate dives with higher degrees of difficulty.

When she arrived in Cambridge, Pam could perform a front two-and-one-half off the three-meter board, but could only do it in tuck (legs bent and tucked tightly against the body during the somersaults) position. To learn to do it in pike (legs straight throughout) would add .2 (the difference between 2.1 and 2.3) to the dive's DD.

Early season attempts were disastrous. "It got to the point where I had to decide whether I wanted to work on it early in practice while I was fresh and might have a chance to get all the way around, or to save it 'til the end when all that crashing wouldn't ruin the rest of the workout," Pam said.

"She looked like the bombadier squad for a while," coach Walker said, "there was a time when we talked about going back to the two-and-one-half tuck just because I was tired of seeing her getting herself smashed up."

Pam desperately wanted to learn the new dive, though, knowing that she would need the higher DD when late-season championship competition began.

Progress was slow but a legitimate breakthrough occurred at the Greater Boston meet. "That had to bolster her confidence when she hit it for fives and five-and-one-halves there, but even I didn't expect what she did with it at the Ivy meet," Walker says.

Performing the old nemesis as the third dive on her list, Pam fully completed the somersaults in the air and knifed into the water nearly perpendicular. The judges' awards of seven, seven, seven-and-one-half, when multiplied with the dive's DD of 2.3 gave her a very respectable total of 49.45 on the dive which had caused so much frustration in the early season. So much for the bombadier squad.

Walker says dedication and extreme powers of concentration are reasons for Stone's emergence as a blue-chip diver. Similarly, Pam's roommates marvel at her ability to drag herself out of bed after a late evening for morning practice and her ability to work through practically any distraction when necessary.

"She's amazing," roommate Amy Walsh said recently. "Practices twice a day, some tough courses (Ec 10 and Math lb among others) and she still has a great time."

For one who says she felt "like a miniant" during the confusion of freshman week, Pam seems to have carved herself a solid niche. Now, how about that kiss from Shamu!