280 Living
April 2015 | Volume 8 | Issue 8
neighborly news & entertainment
Award winner
Arc of a
diver
Learn who you voted as this year’s Community Member of the Year and how she is making a difference in the lives of those around her.
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Home Guide
Eighth-grader climbs ladder of top state divers for Spain Park
By DAVID KNOX Find tips for your home this spring from area business owners in our guide to all things home and garden.
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Zachary El-Fallah Photos by Keith McCoy.
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 body 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.”
See DIVER | page A31