Trojans sophomore Luke Hawkins places fourth at diving regional to qualify for state meet with a little breathing room

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

At this stage of his diving career, the ultimate accomplishment would be making it to the state meet for Chesterton sophomore Luke Hawkins. Now that he’s done that, he can soak in the experience.
“I feel like there is a lot of pressure gone,” Hawkins said. “It just got released after I knew I made it.”
Hawkins finished fourth at the Tuesday night diving regional and needed to finish in the top eight to advance to join the travel party for this weekend’s state meet in Indianapolis.
The pressure that left him when he made it, there was plenty of that, said Hawkins, who didn’t take up diving until attending Chesterton diving coach Elijah Mercado’s camp the summer leading into his freshman season.
“My coach kind of calmed me down a little,” Hawkins said. “We were talking and having fun.”
Hawkins said he caught a break on his final dive.
“They didn’t notice my toe touched the board a little bit,” Hawkins said.
In high school diving, the coaches judge the event. Meets in the regular season have three judges. All three judges’ scores make up the total.
In conference meets, sectionals and regionals, the top two and bottom two scores are thrown out and the three in the middle make up the score.
“I saw him jump off the board and I can tell the way their body positions are that it’s going to be good,” Mercado said of Hawkins’ final dive. “So, when he jumped off, I immediately knew, OK, this is going to be a good dive. He kicked out to enter the water and I didn’t know because I saw only the result of his finish. I saw him enter the water and he was very straight and his rotation in the air was very pretty. I was screaming and shouting and I didn’t even know he touched the board.”
Then when Mercado saw one of the judges gave Hawkins a 2, he momentarily was puzzled.
“From what I saw, it wasn’t a 2 because I didn’t know he touched the board,” Mercado said. “By the rules, if you hit the board, it’s a maximum 2. Out of the seven judges, only one of them saw it. If I were judging and I saw it, I would have put a 2.”
If all the judges had seen the toe-touch, all the scores would have been 2.
“I believe he would have made it anyway,” Mercado said. “He had some breathing room.”
Mercado said he was confident Hawkins had what it took to make it out of the Valparaiso regional, but he also knew he would have to get his nerves under control to make it happen.
“Super nervous,” Mercado said of Hawkins. “It’s his first time being there in the regional championship. I’ve been in that position before when it’s your first time, super nervous. You’re probably overthinking what you’re doing in your dives. You’re seeing divers who are a lot better than the sectional because they’re from all over Indiana.”
Mercado stressed the next-play mentality used by coaches in all sports.
“I kept reminding him don’t rush mentally, thinking ahead of what’s in front of us,” Mercado said. “Stick to one thing at a time. If you’re stretching, focus on that only. If we’re jumping on the board, focus only on that. If we’re doing a front dive, think of only that. Don’t think of anything harder. Don’t think about your last dive. Just worry about what’s in front of us and focus on that next step.”
Hawkins did that well enough to make it to Indy. His regional score of 320.70 was 27th-best among the 32 divers in the field.
“Very cool,” Mercado said of him making it. “He was holding back some tears a little bit too. I don’t think he wanted to cry in front of the camera, but I could tell he was super happy. I’m happy for him. He’s young too.”

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