Divers are unlike any other athlete. They throw themselves off a board and angle their body in positions while getting scored on how easily they enter the water. 

And on top of that? Their coach is their judge. 

For the past two years, DHS’s dive team has been led by coach Sam Pinkerton. 

While Pinkerton balances the challenge of maintaining impartiality for his divers, his athletes share a fondness of him.

The divers love the relationship they have with their coach and his coaching style that he establishes during practices.

“I work better under extreme pressure. He tells me that if I don’t do my dives then I have no business doing dive. Now of course he doesn’t mean it but it puts pressure on me to perform well,” junior Jonas Cunningham said. 

Cunningham trusts Pinkerton in a way that enables him to push himself to the best of his abilities during meets. 

“His style of coaching is a lot different from what I’ve seen from other coaches. He will find your weaknesses. Then he will exploit them to try new dives,” Cunningham said. 

Cunningham has been diving for two years and expects to dive for one more. He first started diving his sophomore year, given that Pinkerton persuaded him too and he doesn’t regret it. 

Pinkerton has high expectations for his own divers because he knows their strengths and weaknesses. He has to be impartial and treat his divers with equal judgment.

His No. 1 coaching rule is to work hard and stay dedicated. 

“I want them to be pushing themselves. I want them to be trying to become the best they can be and if they’re working hard, I’m proud of them,” Coach Pinkerton said.

“They score off your approaches, how you come off the board, and how you enter the water plus how you look coming out of your tuck pike (type of diving position)”, senior Mykal Berry said. 

Each dive is judged on a scale from 1-10 in half-point increments by five coaches. 

“If everybody gets say a 5, I might give them a 4 ½ and it’s just because I know the mistakes that they normally make, so I see them,” Pinkerton said.

“As a coach, I want to offer feedback after every dive for my kids; but as a judge I have to stay in my chair and stay relatively quiet,”  Pinkerton said. 

While Danny Smith, the assistant swim coach, was in shock at watching some of the Panthers’ divers narrowly miss hitting the diving board, Pinkerton’s facial expressions were unfazed. He knows that everyone has their own way to complete the dives they are assigned. 

“In my head I was thinking ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god’,” Assistant coach  Smith said. 

“It takes a special kind of person to be able to leave the board do a flip and still be far enough from the board to not hit it” 

Pinkerton knows their limitations. He is aware of what they need to improve and where their maximum effort should be. 

“I’m not the one on the diving board. It’s the divers, let them achieve what they’re going to achieve… just let them get after it,” Pinkerton said.