The Writer, Nikki Banas once said, “You don’t need to spend all of your time doing something you don’t even like to earn others’ approval. Learn to be uniquely yourself instead.” 

     That can be applied to many circumstances, but a specific one seen today at Xavier High School is freshman Nicole Dworzynski, and her desire to stand out. Dworzynski is the only diver from Xavier on the Kennedy girl’s swim team and she helps shine light on the differences between swimming and diving. 

    “Divers have to practice a lot since diving requires muscle memory, it takes a lot of practice to get high scores of dives,” Dworzynski said, “Swimmers do a training method called taper, and it’s where they rest more than sprint during practice.” 

     Dworzynski’s older sister, Emma Dworzynski, a junior at Xavier High School is also on Kennedy’s swim team, but is a swimmer. She gives more of a swimmer’s perspective on the difference between the two activities. 

   “For diving they do more repetition of movements and more ab workouts, for swimmers it’s more drills and basic technique training,” Emma said. 

      Emma also shared how the two activities have similarities.

    “Both swimming and diving only give you one chance and it’s only for a few seconds to a few minutes which adds a lot of stress and pressure to the situation,” Emma said.

    Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, Nicole is unable to attend regionals, but that does not stop her from setting goals for herself and where she would like to have gotten if she was able to go. 

      “If I was going to regionals this year I would like to place in the top 50 divers, but this year with COVID-19 it’s really hard to get practice time in,” Nicole said. 

      Through the struggles 2020 has sent, Nicole did not let those setbacks keep her from expressing herself in a different way than everyone else.