McCrory not one to save best dives for last

Nick McCrory won his second national championship in platform diving behind a dominant first attempt.
Nick McCrory won his second national championship in platform diving behind a dominant first attempt.

Next weekend, Purdue diver David Boudia will travel more than 600 miles, from Indiana down to Durham.

It might seem an odd destination for Boudia, who last weekend finished second in the platform event at the NCAA Championships—to Duke’s Nick McCrory.

When Boudia gets to campus, though, the pair will be teammates for a change, but even as they hone the precise teamwork required for synchronized diving, they’ll still be competing.

“Even when we practice,” McCrory said, “everything’s a competition. We’ll be getting ready to do something synchro, and we usually do one or so of each of our dives individually before we do it at the same time, so we’ll turn that little individual into a competition round in practice.”

And last weekend, the latest chapter in a “friendly competition”—which began in junior diving and continued through last year’s NCAA Championships—was written in Minneapolis, Minn. It was McCrory who took center stage, as he emerged with his second NCAA title in his two years at Duke.

Boudia entered the finals of the platform competition as the favorite, advancing out of the preliminary rounds as the top seed. The Boilermaker hoped to add to his trophy haul after capturing both the one-meter and three-meter diving titles earlier in the week.

Lurking one place behind him, though, was longtime friend and foe McCrory. The situation was fairly familiar for McCrory, who went into the finals of last year’s NCAA Championships as the third seed, again looking up at the No. 1 seed Boudia.

McCrory said he enjoys going into a competition seeded second, since each round of dives proceeds in reverse order of seeding. So McCrory dove second-to-last, ahead of Boudia.

“I like being in that position going into a final because that means I get to put pressure on the last diver every round,” McCrory said.

And McCrory applied plenty of pressure from the outset, as he nailed his first dive, completing a remarkable four-and-a-half somersaults as he traversed the ten meters from platform to pool. Combine his top-notch execution with the dive’s incredible 3.7 degree of difficulty, and he netted 101.75 points and a commanding 23.35-point lead after just one dive.

“It’s interesting that I put that dive first because normally people will save their highest degree of difficulty for the end,” McCrory said. “I like putting that dive first because I just like competing it. It’s fun to do, to get the adrenaline going.”

He made the decision to move the dive to the front of his program last year, and he says it “has really paid off.” Two other divers attempted the dive in the finals as well, but both of them used it as their last dive. McCrory’s performance on the dive nearly exceeded that of both of the other competitors combined: Boudia scored 79.55 points for it, and Texas’s Drew Livingston got just 49.95 points for a total of 129.5.

McCrory never looked back from there, placing first in four of the six rounds, including another score over 100 for his final dive.

He dominated the event from start to finish, despite having to change his program at the last minute after suffering a minor shoulder injury in one of the earlier competitions. He also competed in the 1-meter and 3-meter springboard events, and the busy schedule provided an even greater physical challenge.

But the injury didn’t affect him except on his newest dive, so he had to use an alternate for his third dive. The switch didn’t faze him at all, as he scored straight 9.5s for the dive, for 91.2 points.

It was then, McCrory said, that he felt confident he would walk away with his second trophy in as many years.

“At that point I was just able to trust that I just needed to relax and do my last three dives like I’d been training them, and like I knew I could, and that if I did, then I would win,” he said.

Modifying his program is nothing new for McCrory, who has tinkered with his list of dives several times since coming to Duke.

“Unfortunately the tower event has sort of turned into ‘how many flips can you do before you hit the water?’” he said. “So there’s always people throwing new dives.”

He learned two new dives in the fall training season leading up to last year’s NCAA Championships and has added more to his repertoire since then.

It also doesn’t hurt that his mental fortitude has improved from enduring the more frequent competitions of the college scene. McCrory said he’s learned a great deal from the long season of dual meets, which don’t give the same level of competition as the national-level meets in which he’s accustomed to competing. He’s had to learn how to pump himself up for some of the lower-key dual meets, and that has enhanced his mental abilities.

“Forcing myself to get excited and ready and dive well really helps me in the big meets where I’m trying to stay calm and collected,” McCrory said.

Fortunately, as he tinkers with his program and learns to manage his mental state, he’s supported by a coach with whom he’s been familiar since before he came to college. McCrory knew Duke diving coach Drew Johansen in juniors, and he trained with Johansen for a year prior to enrolling at Duke.

“He’s really been able to make the technical changes that I need to take my dives to the next level, and just improve consistency and sharpness,” McCrory said.

Johansen, who is also the long-time coach of Duke junior Abby Johnston—who won the 3-meter springboard event at the women’s NCAA Championships—is unafraid to set lofty goals for his divers.

“He expects a lot, so it’s fun training for him because he knows what I’m capable of, and always pushes me to do everything in practice to the best of my ability,” McCrory said. “He always works hard and he knows when I’m working hard.”

The next goal for McCrory and his coach is lofty indeed—making the 2012 Olympic team that will represent the United States in London. The goal seemed sacred to McCrory when he talked about it: He lowered his voice perceptibly, and his hands, which had been in constant motion, lay suddenly still. He’d been verbose in some of his answers as he addressed the media for nearly 25 minutes, but when the Olympic subject was broached, he had little to say.

“Everything’s sort of been pointed in that direction,” McCrory said. “It’s my ultimate goal to be on that team.”

And if that’s what he hopes to do, an NCAA title can’t hurt.

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