Steve Schramm: The Perfectionist Who Knows All the Dives

The miracles of modern science.

Nowadays, not only are there calculators that translate foreign languages, tell time and whistle Dixie, but there is even a calculators that can dive.

Steve "Bowmar" Schramm can multiply in his head any two numbers between one and 30 and beat the fastest Texas Instruments to the answer. The Crimson senior can also execute dives from both the one-and three-meter boards with the same calculated precision and agility.

Schramm says his exceptional talent for multiplying comes from going to meets and memorizing patterns on the slide calculator that computes the degree of difficulty of a dive.

"Just from watching meets, by the time I was 12 I had learned how to tell within three or four points out of three or four hundred, where someone finished. After a while I became interested in math," the Kirkland House senior said last week.

Learning math through competition supports Schramm's belief that diving differs from other sports because "the mind doesn't teach the body, but the body teaches the mind."

"The motions in diving are everyday--walking, jumping, swinging your arms--so the skill you learn is not as much physical as it is an awareness of what you're doing," Schramm said.

Schramm makes his dives more precise by breaking them down into such minute detail that if someone were to stop him in mid-air, he said he could tell them exactly where he was and how many revolutions he had completed.

"Some divers would say 'I have to be smoother or stronger,'" Jamie Greacen, one of Schramm's old teammates said, "but Steve would say 'My left toenail should be a little more over here.'"

Although Schramm's constant striving for perfection sometimes leaves him dissatisfied, his diligent training and concentration has made him the best diver in the East.

To further perfect his style, Schramm trains himself through psychocibernetics--a kind of mental workout. In his mind, Schramm thinks through all his dives, incorporating positive thoughts and adjusting the mental picture until the dive is flawless. He then transfers these thoughts into actions while competing.

"Steve is so precise in every dive that if you miss a dive, you can't catch up, and if he misses a dive, you still don't have much of a chance," Crimson freshman diver Jeff Mule says.

Undefeated

This season, the 5-ft., 5-in., 130 pounder remains undefeated in one meter board competition and has already qualified for the NCAA in that event by twice notching scores of over 290. On the three-meter-board, Schramm was topped only once by Mule.

On Sunday, Schramm will face some of the most difficult competition of his life when Indiana's three All-Americans, Rob Bollinger, Niki Stajkovic and Doug MacAskill invade Cambridge. While the diving competition will be intense, according to Schramm it wll also be healthy.

"Since all the divers have the same intention, and all are trying to solve the same problems, it's not a question of putting the other guy down," the pre-med said. "Diving is more social than swimming can be because you can talk between dives but you can't during laps. Swimmers need to be a little hostile to each other, I think, but divers can be close-knit within themselves."

A twelve-year veteran of diving, Schramm can predict what a dive will be like the second he leaves the board. He enjoys the quick feedback of the sport because he can repeat the dive immediately if he's displeased.

Over the years, Schramm said he learned to dislocate himself while he's diving, separating his brain from his body like a human calculator. The miracles of modern science.