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Chittum Falters, Beach Sets Record at Regionals

Chris HoffmanHighlands Today

Avon Park junior John Chittum performs during Saturday's Class 1A-Region 2 diving competition in Winter Park.

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By CHRIS HOFFMAN

Highlands Today

Published: November 10, 2008

WINTER PARK - Shane Wirries knew something wasn't right after he watched John Chittum's first dive at the Class 1A-Region 2 finals at Trinity Prep in Winter Park on Saturday.

"Something was off," said the AP dive coach. "John is the best back diver at the competition and he normally gets 7's on his first dive and he got 5 ½'s, which got me a bit worried."

Wirries' anxiety turned out to be right on the money, as Chittum hit the board on his fourth dive - a reverse 1 ½ -- and tumbled into the water and with it his chance at being the 14th straight Avon Park diver to qualify for state.

"The second I saw his feet touch the board his legs buckled and he couldn't recover," Wirries said. "The reverse 1 ½ was the dive I was worried about, not about failing, but about looking bad."

Chittum, who was an almost lock to make it to state after posting 373 points for a district championship, had failed on his reverse double with his second dive that Wirries said he never failed ever.

"He's usually money on that dive," Wirries said.

The combination of the two failed dives disqualified Chittum from competition.

Wirries let the Avon Park junior try to grasp what had happened, but offered solace in the future.

"The good thing about John is he's a junior," Wirries said. "It's really tough mentally to end the season like this, but he at least he has a chance to redeem himself next year."

At last year's regionals, Heather Roberts failed to execute correctly on one of her dives and it cost her a chance at the state finals by three points. Wirries said that Roberts had a hard time dealing with the notion that her diving career ended on such a down note.

"Heather was in tears afterward because not only was diving done for her, but it ended the way it did," Wirries said. "I felt really bad for her because that was it. There wasn't another day on the board for her."

The question mark surrounding Chittum is how he'll rebound from his regional performance.

"The hard part is there's no diving until the summer, so he's going to have to go over this in his mind until then," Wirries said. "You won't really know the damage mentally until next year, but I've got faith in him that he'll bounce back.

"The toughest part is going to be the next few weeks. He'll have to work through it and sooner or later, he's going to have to let it go."

The surprise of the dive competition was the performance of the Lake Placid duo of freshman Mark Greenauer and sophomore EJ Velazquez, who placed seventh and eighth, respectively,

The real story was that the pair had only taken up diving less than two months prior to regionals.

Green Dragon dive coach DJ Brouwer couldn't say enough about his protege's after the competition.

"These kids came out and didn't fail a single dive and that says a lot being that this is their first regional meet," Brouwer said. "The sky is the limit for both of these kids. Now we'll go back to the drawing board and work on helping them learn twists and raise the level of difficulty of their dives.

"I have no doubt that they'll both be back here many times before they finish swimming for the Green Dragons."

Coincidently, Brouwer was Wirries first state diving qualifier back in 1994 at Avon Park, where the LP dive coach made three straight appearances at the state finals, finishing with a pair of sixth-place finishes during his junior and senior seasons.

Brouwer says that his boys are much more advanced than he was at this stage.

"They're way ahead of me when I was there age," Brouwer said. "And that is pretty scary since you take in account they've only been diving for less than 60 days.

"We've got a bright future for Green Dragon diving."

In the swimming competition, sophomore Kevin Smit made a strong case for an invitation to the state finals, by placing seventh in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 1:00.64 in the finals.

Smit, wearing his blue and silver Speedo swimsuit, posted an even faster time of 59.56 in the preliminaries and will have to await word if he'll be moving on.

"I've trained really hard and felt pretty good about my performance today," Smit said. "I just want to continue to keep getting better and hopefully be in the top three by the time I'm a senior."

Lake Placid junior Tammi Beach reached one of her goals at regionals, breaking Tracy Moreo's decade old school record in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:12.29, which bested the time by 0.52 seconds and was good enough for a 13th place finish.

The LP boy's 200-yard medley relay team, consisting of Dylan Weber-Callahan, Michael Trujillo, Robert Greene and Smit, placed ninth with a time of 1:54.02.

The girl's 200-yard freestyle relay team, with Marbelly Creel, Shannon Cummings, Cherish McBryer and Beach, placed 11th with a time of 1:54.05.

As a team, the Green Dragon boys placed 12th out of 37 teams and the girls placed 19th at regionals.

"I'm really proud of this young team," LP swim coach Tom Creel said. "We don't have the numbers or the facilities that many of these other schools have, but we proved that we're going to be a team on the rise in the coming years."

Chris Hoffman can be reached at 863-386-5827 or choffman@highlandstoday.com

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