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Zachary El-Fallah always liked being “airborne and flipping,” he said.
Tumbling, trampolining, gymnastics, you name it.
But he’d never considered diving until he watched the Olympic Games.
“I just didn’t have the upper bwody strength for gymnastics,” El-Fallah said. “So after watching the diving on the Olympics, we [he and his mother, Michelle] went to the Greystone YMCA, but they didn’t have any diving boards. They told us about the Hoover Recreation Center and the Hoover dive team.”
El-Fallah figured diving into water was just like the dives he took into the foam pit in tumbling or gymnastics.
It was a rude awakening. “It hurts more when you smack into the water,” he said.
That was a little more than three years ago. In December, El-Fallah — an eighth-grader at Berry Middle School — posted a second-place finish in the Alabama High School Athletic Association championships in Auburn, competing for Spain Park High School. That runner-up finish came on the heels of a 14th-place finish a year ago and is all the more remarkable because the 14-year-old was recovering from a stress fracture that limited his practice.
“I’m extremely proud of him,” said his mother. “To go from 14th last year to second, especially for the amount of practice he got. The doctor really didn’t want him to dive. He didn’t do anything for 10 weeks. He only got four practices in before the meet.”
His coach at Spain Park is Sally Mathias. But in the world of Alabama high school swimming and diving, for the most part, the athletes do their training with a club that works year-round. The Hoover Dive Club coach is Charlie Dunham.
“The big thing about Zachary is he matured a lot over the last year,” Dunham said. “To be a really good diver, you have to increase the degree of difficulty in your dives. Over the past year, he really worked hard and learned a bunch of more difficult dives. In every single type of dive, he added at least a half a somersault. Last year he learned what he had to do to get to the next level.”
El-Fallah puts it more bluntly.
“I had a mental block,” he said. “I was a crybaby. I didn’t have the confidence to stay and practice.”
Part of that was being diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome in his sixth-grade year. It’s a heart condition occurring in about one to three of every 1,000 people. It’s characterized by abnormal electrical pathways in the heart that cause a disruption of the heart’s normal rhythm, and it made his heart race. In El-Fallah’s case, it required surgery.
He also suffered a concussion diving as a seventh-grader. So it took a little courage to get back on the board.
Dunham explains another part of it.
“When you increase the degree of difficulty, you’re no longer diving straight in,” the coach said. “You’re going in blind in every direction. It’s not a natural thing to do. The board throws you into the air, and you’re not always in control so you have to adjust.
“Part of diving is busting and landing wrong, and he’s matured and overcome that. There’s a point in each diver where they go, ‘Ooh, I landed wrong. I’m never going to try that again’ … or ‘I’m going to learn how to do that right.’
“Zachary is just a great kid, a hard worker. We are fortunate to have him in our program.”
