Swimming-Diving
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: People always assume that you favorite memory in competition is a win, and I guess mine technically is. This year competing at Central Bucks East, I was the only male diver at the start of the season. Now, I had been trying to recruit people for a while, but either they showed no interest or they were just too nervous, and I was beginning to become nervous myself. The first meet of the year is a multi-team competition. Every school has one boys team and one girls team that both have two people on it. Since I was the only guy at East, I could not compete because we did not have two people on the team. The day before the meet, I was talking to this one swimmer who I had known for a while because of other various sports, and he came from a similar athletic background as me. After talking for a little bit, he decided that he was going to give practice a go that day. By the end of that practice, I was able to teach him the six dives that he would have needed to compete in the meet the next day. And, if not for the date cutoff, we would have been able to compete. Anyway, it’s just amazing to see that there are other people out there who share my same drive for the sport of diving. I’m glad to see that I can leave the team with him next year, and I can’t wait to see how he progresses.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened competing in sports: In diving we all have smacks, it’s how you learn. But one day, warming up for a meet, I had an especially funny one. I was doing lead up jumps when someone called out my name. None the wiser, I took my eyes off the board and lost focus of what I had been doing. So, not only did I almost miss landing back the board, but I landed on my butt, got a huge scratch, and then proceeded to just fall in.
Music on mobile device: Alternative Rock & Rap
Future plans: As of right now, I am unsure of what I really want to pursue with in college. I think I want to pursue something in the sciences with biochemistry, but I still have time to really figure out what I like.
Words to live by: “Never cheat yourself, or deny yourself the opportunity to be the best person you can be.”
One goal before turning 30:
Be financially stable
Maybe start a family
Still enjoying life
One thing people don’t know about me: I love to act, so you never know - maybe that will take me somewhere someday.
By Ed Morrone
Whether an extreme case of beginner’s luck or just a well of previously untapped potential, Evan Clark has come a long way in the course of a little over a year.
Clark, a senior at Central Bucks East, recently wrapped up his second season as a member of the school’s swimming and diving team, though his specialty falls entirely into the latter category. With a craft as specialized as diving, one would assume Clark has been performing competitively his entire life, especially after qualifying for consecutive district meets and nabbing a Division-I scholarship to dive at Bryant University.
As it turns out, the opposite is true.
Prior to joining the CB East diving program as a junior, Clark had never dived or swam competitively. His entire experience prior to this unexpected odyssey on the platform came on the board on his swimming pool at home or cliff jumping in the area around where Clark lives. And, believe it or not, his interest in the craft stemmed from a different sport altogether.
“My sister did gymnastics growing up, and I would go to a lot of her meets,” Clark said. “Just seeing her flip through the air so gracefully, it made me strive to do something like that. Growing up, we had a diving board in the pool at our house, and we also had a trampoline in the backyard, so I was always trying stuff out there to try and imitate my sister.”
Unfortunately for Clark, there were no club gymnastics teams for boys, so the extent of his experience was limited to goofing around with family and friends. His recruitment to the team at CB East was basically an accident, as the program was without a diver for a year. One day in eleventh-grade Spanish class, Clark’s teacher, an assistant coach with the girls swim team, asked if anyone was interested in filling the void.
Clark grabbed the flier and raced home, telling his hesitant parents about his newfound interest in diving.
“It was a pretty last minute thing, so they were both irritated in the moment,” Clark recalled with a chuckle. “They didn’t expect much of it, and neither did I. I went to preseason later that day, and I just started getting into it.”
Clark said he tried to learn three to four dives on his first day, and he was immediately taken aback at how much more difficult the platform at CB South — where the CB East, South and West teams all train — was to use than his board at home, as this particular one came without as much spring to it.
By the second day of training, Clark added a few more dives to his repertoire, and by the end of the preseason he had a list of more than 20. The learning curve was steep, Clark said, as he had to both learn the physical movement of the dives as well as clear the mental hurdle of smacking his body on the board as he descended from the air down toward the water.
“You become fearless,” Clark said. “From that first day of preseason until now, I’ve probably smacked it over 500 times in two seasons. It doesn’t even phase me anymore. For me, the biggest thing was just a constant repetition. I’ve always been a competitive person, and I just kicked that drive to perform into overdrive.”
According to Clark, although swimming and diving fall under the same umbrella during the winter season, they are very separate entities. Unlike swimming, success in diving isn’t calculated by the best time; rather, you have to tabulate the best score. Each dive is worth a certain amount of predetermined points; for example, a Front 1.5 Pike is worth 1.7 points, multiplied by a score of zero to 10 for each attempt. Each dual meet usually consists of six dives, and at the end, scores for each are added together cumulatively, with a score of 210 good enough to qualify for districts in Clark’s first season.
He said after his first meet, his score was around 125, which ballooned to a high of 275 by season’s end. His practice, it would appear, was paying off in a big way.
“When I say this entire experience has been surreal, I’m really not kidding,” Clark said. “It’s been amazing. Some of the closest friends I’ve made during this experience have been my biggest diving competitors. When I first came into contact with them, I got a real sense of what this community was like.
“One of my biggest competitors during the process has been Connor Levant at CB West. He was one of the first male divers in my community I came into contact with, and my first goal was to try to be as good as him. By the end of that first season, our scores were very even and we were pushing each other at practice to try and outdo one another. I didn’t know what to expect in terms of how I would be viewed as a diver since I had just started, but I’ve never heard anything but positive feedback. Even opposing coaches have offered me tips and I’ve made a lot of great friends who have helped me come as far as I have.”
During the East-West dual meet during Clark’s junior year, the idea to explore diving at the collegiate level was first planted in his head. Diving against Levant, Clark was able to reach a score that qualified him for districts. Talking to the mother of a friend whose daughter competed in college, Clark learned of a recruiting website where he could sign up and post videos of his dives to try to capture the attention of college coaches.
It worked. Within a week, Clark started getting some interest from recruiters. The commitment to Bryant happened fast, and he choose the Smithfield, Rhode Island school over others such schools as Vassar, Holy Cross and Rochester.
“The recruiting process, I never expected it to turn out the way it did,” Clark said. “To be a first-year diver and commit to a Division-I school, I didn’t think it was possible. It sounds cliché, but I guess you can say dreams really can come true.”
Ed Walsh, the boys swimming coach at CB East, has been amazed at how far Clark has come in such a short amount of time.
“What he’s done is very difficult,” Walsh said. “He has to have a well-developed sense of kinesthesia to know where his body parts are and how to move them, and he has to be fearless. You have to be willing to try new stuff, and there’s no way you could get me to do that, even at his age. I’ve been very impressed. He was recruited out of Spanish class, and he just said, ‘Sure, I’ll go do this,’ and the rest is history.”
Like many kids growing up, Clark tried several sports. He played football, wrestled and played soccer at CB East for two years. He’s a thrower for the spring track and field team and also put in two years of winter track before he found his calling as a diver.
“With my background and body type, you wouldn’t expect me to be graceful on the board,” he said. “All I’ve done throughout my childhood evolved me into the person I am today and how I feel about competition. I just love the whole atmosphere that surrounds it.”
Clark figured he would always compete in college, he just figured it would be at the club level. Instead, he’s got an opportunity that he never could have envisioned prior to his junior year. Clark said he hopes to continue breaking barriers in diving as he continues to hone his skills, and he’s looking forward to the challenges that collegiate diving will present, such as learning to dive on a larger, three-meter board.
Clark said he will continue to push himself and strive to get better every day, as wants to be a contributor and someone his team can count on to help deliver wins, not “just dead weight.” He wants to “amplify and expand” what he already knows, and he continues to watch videos of divers who have competed at the national and international levels to try and absorb as much as possible about his craft.
“I watch a lot of videos and I slow them down in certain areas if a certain skill isn’t clicking for me,” he said. “I look at the body and its position and try to absorb as much information as I can for people who do it so well. Seeing how amazing Olympians are with their body control in diving from 10-meter platforms, just being able to compete at that level amazes me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good as them, but with my situation and how I got into it, it forces me to strive to be the best I can be with the tools I have at my disposal.”
Clark isn’t sure what field of study he’ll zero in on at Bryant, though he did mention biochemistry and molecular biology as possible areas of interest. One of the things that drew him to Bryant’s academic curriculum is that whatever your major is, your minor has to come in an opposite area of study in an effort to make students more well-rounded individuals when they come out of college. The school also requires eight hours of study hall a week for its student-athletes, which felt like home to a kid whose parents were always very on top of their children’s academics.
When asked about what he likes to do when he’s not perfecting new dives or hitting the books, Clark revealed that one of his favorite hobbies is cooking. Since his sophomore year, he’s held a job as a cook at a local restaurant called The Lobster Claw, which, like diving, allows him to experiment and perfect a craft that comes with a certain level of improvisation. Like in diving, cooking gives Clark the freedom to express his creativity by learning new techniques.
Walsh has enjoyed his short time in coaching and getting to know Clark.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t succeed,” the Patriots' coach said. “It’s just a matter of him continuing to put in the time. He’s made considerable progress in the year he’s been diving, and there’s no reason why he won’t continue to progress. It will take him some time to figure out that next level, and I hope it’s something he still enjoys, rather than become drudgery, for the next four years.
“When you stop and think about it - him throwing himself into the air, water can be a hard surface if you hit it flat. I’ve definitely seen him wipe out on dives, but he gets right back up there and does it again. He gets right back on the board a second time to do it a little better. He’s worked really hard to improve.”
For his part, Clark has loved every second of his short, strange detour into the world of competitive diving that has opening doors he may have never stepped through otherwise.
“It’s been one of the best experiences of my entire life,” Clark said. “The satisfaction of finally putting the pieces together, it’s the most gratifying feeling I could ever get.”
