Trying something new

They only wanted a few things. To try something different. Have no regrets when looking back as an adult. And fun, have lots of fun.

So when Noah Amen, Nick Locascio and Michael Phenicie decided to pass on their other sports and dive with the Mullen swimming team this spring,

it was more than a whim. Along with Bobby Meagher, who swam for the Mustangs the past two seasons before opting to dive, the three were in search of a new challenge.
“Well, we typically play lacrosse and we just wanted to do a sport we had never tried before, so we decided to do diving,” Amen said. “We wanted to give it a shot. And it was fun. We really had a blast.”

Amen, Locascio and Phenicie typically ski and snowboard Keystone in the winter and were lured by employing the principles of doing flips and the like on the slopes to the diving board and the pool.  “The flips and stuff like tht were pretty transferable, but the hard part was learning the technique of how to enter the water, particularly the toes part,” Phenicie said. “You have to enter without a splash.”

Locascio, previously part of the track team, said, “Oh, yeah, we loved it, the most fun I’ve ever had. The falls are the hard part of skiing and boarding, and we were used to it. That feeling of learning something new and trying something bigger and harder ... it was fun.”

Mullen coach Susan Stone said she was delighted to have them on the team, particularly for a program that is climbing back in terms of numbers and success after a low point followed the 2011 state team championship.

Plus, her first-time divers qualified for the Centennial League ‘A’ meet.  “And they did great,” Stone said. “When they started, they didn’t know how to do anything in diving in league or that they had to do 11 dives.  “It was exciting because our team is so small. We have not had divers for two years.”

None of the three wanted to run into former classmates in the future and lament that they should have tried this sport or that sport. They wanted to actually do something about it.
Phenicie, also a scratch golfer who will attend Washington, said he “had played the same sport for, like, two or three years and I wanted to see what else was out there. We like to do different things. Growing up in Colorado is a luxury to have all of the opportunities, like biking, or hiking … it was fun.”  Headed to Montana State, where, like Phenicie, he will turn to intramurals, Amen said “we progressed a lot. We were really bad at the beginning, but we picked it up quickly.”  A junior, Locascio said he’ll be back next season for another go on the board. And he’ll look forward to it.

“It was a lot more formal than what we’ve done on the trampoline and snow,” he said. “You have to point your toes and on certain steps off the board pay very fine attention to detail. It was something new to us. It was hard to get over that learning curve. “And I had never really interacted with the swimmers. It actually was just a really fun environment with all of the team dinners and stuff like that, just a super welcoming environment.”

As the small Mullen team heads into Friday’s beginning of the Class 4A state meet at the Air Force Academy, junior Blaze Jensen is rated first in the 100-yard breaststroke and second in the 200 freestyle. A strong showing, Stone said, “would be huge for us.”  

So was, she added, having additional divers who were out as much for a good time as they were for competition.  “Having them was good for team camaraderie,” Stone said. “They were a part of the whole program.”