This Sunday, Nick Nepomuceno will stare down from 10 metres high and attempt to crack the water below six times without a splash.
The recent North Shore high school graduate is in Gatineau, Que., competing in the Summer Senior Nationals in the tower competition, the final event of the meet.
Nick is the only diver from the Lower Mainland competing at senior nationals and he will have to do six compulsory dives from the tower platform: forward, backward, reverse, inward, twisting – 360 degrees front or back – and an arm-stand dive.
“There’s a very, very distinct feeling when you enter the water just right,” Nick said.
The top 12 divers in the preliminaries will move on to the finals. Dive scoring is based on points out of 10 given by the judges.
The top two and bottom two scores are dropped and the remaining scores are multiplied by a factor depending on the degree of difficulty of the dive.
Judges look at approach, takeoff, flight and entry. This includes having a perfect body position, toes pointed, the tightest positions and straightest lines – and ripping the entry, Nick explained.
Although diving might look scary, Nick said, it’s very structured and formed and when he goes for a dive, he knows he’s ready.
“It’s very rare that you’ll be sent out by your coach to do something you’re not prepared for,” he said.
When Nick launches off the platform, he makes very difficult dives look easy, said his coach Igor Kopecky, with both technical elements and esthetics lined up: no splash, straight body line, flexibility and artistic elements adding that “wow factor.”
“He’s very quick and very powerful – these are very advantageous in the sport of diving,” said Kopecky, who is the assistant coach at iDive and a former national team diver.
Because of his strength, Nick is able to rotate quickly and finish his twists long before he hits the water – it requires a lot of control in the air to avoid arching and to come in straight.
Nick started diving when he was just seven years old with the North Shore Dolphins Dive Club. At the age of 11, he started training with iDive at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre in order to learn how to dive from the platform tower.
Even before joining iDive, Nick was part of the provincial diving team at the age of 10, and at the 2014 BC Games, he won two golds.
Learning to train with a purpose rather than just aimlessly practising has taught Nick the discipline he’s needed to succeed in diving.
“A majority of diving is repetition until it’s perfect – sometimes you just to grind it out,” Nick said.
Nick graduated from high school in June and plans to study computer science one day – but before that, he wants to continue with his diving and will be moving to Victoria to train with Boardworks in Saanich, one of Canada’s national training centres.
Saanich is the place where Nick was first inspired to dive. He remembers visiting the pool at Saanich Commonwealth Place when he was around seven years old, seeing the diving boards and pestering his mother all day to teach him to dive headfirst.
After belly-flopping a few times, he became obsessed with learning to dive.
The staff at Boardworks at the Commonwealth pool encouraged him to join the North Shore Dolphins and he was with that club for more than two years.
Nick has had a very good season despite a wrist injury, Kopecky said, and he is coming into the competition in a good position.
“I expect a nice finish to the season,” Kopecky said.
Nick’s eventual dream is to be on the national team, to compete on the world diving stage, represent Canada and travel the world, and he is closer to that dream than he’s ever been.
Watch the event live here: Integrated Sports Systems Live Diving
