The girls of the Bradford High School diving team in Kenosha, Wis, all agree that the toughest part of diving is mental. Executing technique is certainly a craft to perfect, but nothing gets in the way more than the fear of hitting the diving board or smacking the water. </p>Staff Sgt. David Leonhardt, a recruiter with the Milwaukee Recruiting Battalion, also known as Coach David, recites to the team citations of Medal of Honor recipients in response. </p>"I explain how I understand their fears of doing new dives, but that the fears and obstacles we have as athletes are actually luxuries when we step back and look at Soldiers who have truly overcome fears and acted with courage," Leonhardt said.
</p>Leonhardt has been volunteering as a high school diving coach since mid August. At the end of every school day, he coaches the members individually by setting objectives for the day, reviewing their performance and challenging them. If he needs to illustrate the skill of getting over the fear of trying new things, he\'ll get out of uniform and don a swimming suit.
</p>The approach has marked the team members. Christina Reif, a sophomore, is diving with the team for the second year and she said Coach David pushes them to perform dives beyond their comfort zone.
</p>"My (diving) scores from this time last year have gone up a lot," Reif said. "The dives I'm trying are harder and newer, he's really helped me with technique and form and his way of explaining things is easy to understand."
</p>Reif said jumping off the board incorrectly can end in smacking the water "and that hurts." Proper technique and form is a matter of being spared pain before it's a matter of scoring points.
</p>"If you have it in your head that you could possibly smack the water or hit your head, it's really hard to get past that and think about doing the dive correctly," Reif said.
</p>Divers get more points the closer they are to the diving board, but they take a greater risk of hitting it. Marissa MacNeil, another sophomore, said she used to jump out twice as far last year, but "David's made me jump up more and land closer to the board than I'm used to."
</p>She said Leonhardt helped her understand that if she jumps straight up the board will automatically push her out of the way so she doesn't have to worry about hitting it.
</p>Leonhardt said his experience as a diver in high school and college taught him that the sport is based on Newton's third law of motion - to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
</p>"Once you master this concept and manipulate your center of gravity when you leave the board, the sport is easy and the road to perfection is shortened," Leonhardt said.
</p>Jaclyn Pitts, a senior, is taking everything she's learning from Leonhardt to beat the school's record of 368 points for an 11-dive meet. She scored 348 points during a meet the last week of September. The school's record hasn't been beat since 1995.
</p>"I'm just 20 points short," Pitts said. "I'll make up the difference. I've learned two new dives from David and increased the difficulty so it'll definitely help my score a lot."
</p>While the divers are learning new techniques and ways to control their fears, they are also learning what it means to be a Soldier. "I used to think that (Soldiers) weren't normal people, and now (Leonhardt) kind of showed us he's like everybody else," Reif said.
</p>"I thought they were more serious and didn't have a lot of fun." Pitts said she initially suspected Leonhardt would make them drop and do push ups. Now she's learning a coach in the Army can be disciplined and focused, yet "outgoing and cool."
</p>Leonhardt said he's committed to the team because he wants to foster a positive image of the Army and recruiters. At the beginning of the season, he sent the divers' parents a letter explaining who he was and that he was coaching not with the intent of turning the athletes' trust into enlistments but to make them better divers.
</p>"That was the beginning of a great relationship with all the parents," Leonhardt said. "I believe that through meaningful relationships and conversations, people will see the great advantages of serving their country. Even if they are not the ones to enlist, they will be better educated on the subject."
</p>It's no secret to the diving team, nor to the parents, nor to the school that Coach David is an Army recruiter. In fact, the more people realize he's a recruiter the better, because he feels "this gesture is a little bit of an effort to break any stigmas about Army recruiters."
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