Diving from boards has been virtually banned. At swimming pools across the country, diving boards have almost disappeared, thanks to trial lawyers and insurance rates. Even large institutions such as the high school from which I graduated couldn’t afford the insurance required to install a diving board despite its ability to it afford an Olympic-sized pool with a state-of-the-art electronic scoreboard.
I am lucky to have experienced the thrill of diving off a high diving board, something the vast majority of American youth will never know.
So true. When we were kids there was a park not far from us that are parents would take us to. They had a 20' high steel water slide with 4" rails (that's it). They also had a 10 meter platform. It took a lot of guts to go that high and jump off. But once you could do it, it got fun.
Fast forward to the year 2000, Maui, 7 sacred pools. To show off for my new bride I climbed to the highest point of a cliff over one of the pools. Once I got up there (I don't know how high) there was only one way down. I wasn't entirely convinced I could even hit the pool from that height but everyone was watching as very few went all the way to the top. I had planned on diving. Now I was secretly hoping for a helo rescue. I jumped. I should have waited to hold my breath. If you have never felt the force of a violent fabric enema caused by tragic water impact, you haven't lived. My trunks seemed to knock the air out of me as they slammed against my lungs.
Ahh. The memories.