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At 75 feet high, this was no Looney Tunes cliff—an obtuse line to the ocean below, with the wall of rock bulging outwardly and steadily on its downward arc into the water's glassy top. Complicating matters was the quick advancing and retreating of the tide—with the difference of a mere second deciding the fate of whether there was enough water at the base, a plinth of rocks and shelves quite unlike the smooth surface of a swimming pool.
Under such circumstances, even experienced cliff divers might think twice about jumping, but CMS' new diving coach Jimmy Adams did. Nearly 15 years of show-diving had prepared him for the 2003 World Cliff Diving Championship in Acapulco. As one of three divers asked to represent the United States, Adams dove from 55-foot and 75-foot bluffs. At that competition, his team lost in the third round to Belarus, while Adams finished 11th, overall.
As a show-diver traveling across the United States, Adams routinely jumped from 85-foot radio towers into relatively shallow waters before a throng of fans. "Think of going to a hotel," he explains. "They assign you to the fifth floor, and you look down from your room and think, Wow, I'm really high up. I used to dive at least that high several times a day," says Adams, who started diving competitively in high school.
Now in his fourth year at The Claremont Colleges, Adams has coached three divers to four SCIAC championships, an All-American award, and three honorable-mention, All-American awards at CMS. In addition to his coaching duties with the Stags and Athenas, Adams is the head coach of the Riverside-based Turn 'n Burn Diving club. And when the NCAA Division III season concludes, he coaches the diving team at Riverside Community College.
In Division III diving, competitors perform a series of required 1- and 3-meter dives including a front, back, inward, and twister dive. In the second half of competition, competitors present optional dives, increasing the degree of difficulty with more complex moves.
"The thing is, you're going to wipe out; that's inevitable," says Adams, who has suffered his share of mishaps. "You can even get hurt on a 3-meter springboard, like Greg Louganis.
"When there are 5,000 people there and you look down, you realize that many of these people are there to see you wipe out," Adams continues. "But others want to see you somersault and somersault, and you get such a rush from that. I get that rush the same way when I watch the athletes I coach. When I see that they've learned a new dive, and it's because of me, that makes me very proud.
"Teaching is a way to sit back and say, 'That's mine. I did that.'"
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Competing at the 2003 World Cliff Diving Championships in Acapulco, Mexico, Adams dove from the cliffs pictured here.
As a high school student, Adams was the 1988 and 1989 Colorado High School state champion on the 1-meter springboard, setting a state record in '89 for Wasson High School in Colorado Springs.
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