Who doesn't love watching the Olympics? But while most people I know prefer to watch Michael Phelps demolish his competition in the 200-meter butterfly, it's Laura Wilkinson on the 10-meter platform who draws my attention. That's because I'm a diver. Or used to be.

I began diving when I was about 7 years old. I'd always been on swim team, but that summer my friends and I decided to give the dive team a shot as well. We were the type of girls that had to try everything, but only if we did it together.

Of course, you couldn't really call what we did that summer diving; it was more like falling. Still, by the time August rolled around, we could do it all: front fall-ins, back fall-ins ... and that was pretty much it.

Throughout the years that followed, we progressed to what you might call an actual dive. By that, I mean that we learned to do approaches and hurdles, so that we could jump instead of just falling into the water headfirst.

This was probably about the stage that Forest Hill Dive team coach Vic Corbin's infamous imaginary barrel came into play. I couldn't tell you how many times I heard him tell me to jump "over the barrel," in an effort to get me to go up instead of straight down.

Eventually we began learning back dives, and that was about the time my friends bailed on me. But I decided to stick it out. There was something inexplicable about diving that I loved; or maybe I just stayed for the fun days.

Flips and inwards came next, and while they were a little scary, they were nothing too difficult to learn. It wasn't until I was about 10 that I ever had a problem getting the hang of a dive.

That summer, I was trying to turn my front somersault over, into a one-and-a-half. For some reason, that dive stumped me; I would always open up before completing the rotation and land flat on my stomach. I went through that season in a state of continual frustration over my inability to do what to everyone else seemed a simple dive, and every meet that I had to do a single somersault only added to my fervent determination to master the one-and-a-half.

I can vividly recall the August afternoon when I finally did it. As my dad attempted to help from the sidelines, I got up on the board again and again only to see the same result each time: smack, smack, smack. Over and over I felt the sting of failure (literally), until finally my dad told me I was just going to have to suck it up and make myself do it.

And then I made it. I can't remember ever being more proud of myself. There is a certain satisfaction unique to diving, and, feeling it then, I was hooked. I began to winter dive and go to camps at the Naval Academy.

I was never concerned with winning --there was always one girl who habitually beat me -- but getting the two qualifying scores necessary to compete at the Central Maryland Diving League Championships consumed me. The summer I was 11, I took second place in every meet, but I qualified three times. At Championships, I received 12th place. The next year, eighth.

As time went on, the Forest Hill Dive Team became like a family to me. I was now one of its oldest members..

I still have the T-shirt from my last summer on the team; it reads, "The Blind Pilots Association," referring to one of the summer Vic-isms we came to know (When we admitted to diving with our eyes closed, coach Vic would ask if we'd ever fly with a blind pilot to enforce our complete and utter foolishness).

When I became a lifeguard at age 15, diving was one commitment that became more difficult to keep up with. I was still at the pool every day, but to work, not to practice.

I stopped diving last summer, when I was 16, and began teaching swim lessons in the mornings instead. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching lessons, but almost every day I turn to watch the dive practice going on at the same time, seeing myself in many of the new members doing their very first fall-ins. It's incredible how much I miss it.

Sara Olsen is a rising senior at Marriotts Ridge High School. You can reach her at cdumler@theviewnewspapers.com.

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