Freshman Diver Breaks both Hands at State Open

By Anjali Krishnamachar - 09/12
NEIRAD enilno edition

 

A long week of tension plus one late-night meet equaled two broken hands, 10 popped knuckles, and several cut fingers for one rather unlucky girl. Freshman diver Caroline Ashcraft emerged bruised and bloody after her seventh dive at the Connecticut State Open Meet in Hamden on November 20.

Ashcraft was performing a reverse one-and-a-half tuck on the fateful dive, and jumped “up” instead of “out,” resulting in her hitting the diving board. She said, “I knew something was going to happen, as soon as I left the board. Instead of taking off at the end of the board, I left with about a foot of space in front of me.”

“We were so scared that she was going to hit her head,” Dace Ashcraft, Caroline’s mother reports. Instead, what hit the board were both of her hands, as she descended in the streamline position.

Mrs. Ashcraft even has the incident on tape, as she had been taping both Caroline and her sister, Alexandra, for the All American award.
“It was just so shocking,” Caroline Ashcraft said. “I had been doing really well on that dive, so it was weird that I should hit the board.” Unfortunately, Ashcraft had to fail her last four dives, as she was “forced” to go to the hospital. “I really wanted to keep diving,” she said, “but I looked at my hands, which were completely purple, and I knew it was a no-go.”

Ashcraft has won the 2008 AAU Diving National Championship on platform in Florida. “The higher I go, the better I dive,” Ashcraft says, so her best events are platform, three meters, then one meter. This Friday, she dove from one meter, the standard for high school diving. Her self-proclaimed best dives are backwards one-and-a-half and reverse one-and-a-half, so her accident in the latter remains a mystery.
It remains uncertain as to how long until she can return to diving. Ashcraft has had injuries in the past, including breaking one of her fingers last year where she was out of action for three months. She now can be seen in the halls of DHS, sporting two casts, and surrounded by friends anxious to help her with her books.

When asked if she might now have a phobia of reverse dives, Ashcraft shrugged and said nonchalantly, “Everyone hits. I just tend to hit and end up with slightly more dramatic results.”

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