The warm fog of the Homestead pool floats through the air. Sami Nickerson, junior, Homestead’s leading diver, steps onto the diving board, taking a few practice bounces. Her teammate Emma Fox, sophomore, nervously waits next to the board, carefully watching her teammate.

The setting for this meet was Homestead High School conference relays on Tuesday, Sept. 13. Cedarburg, Homestead, Germantown and Nicolet were all in attendance.  “It was just me and Emma Fox competing…[we] are basically a tag team that do 11 combined dives,” Nickerson said.

Fox said that “on each dive you get a score out of ten, and then they add the degree of difficulty for each dive to get a final score. At the end of the competition whichever team has the highest combined totals, wins.”

Nickerson performed six dives and Fox performed five, combining for a total of 425.15 points, catapulting them into first place.  They beat out Cedarburg by a whopping 49.15, pushing them into second place. Landing Nicolet in third place, and Germantown in fourth.

As soon as the scores were announced, Nickerson said, “It was exhilarating competing against the other teams, it just felt like a very low stress, fun meet.” Fox was also giddy after the meet, “I am so happy we took first, we work really hard for these meets so it is amazing to see all of our hard work pay off. I can’t wait for the next one!”

While the swimmers eagerly geared up for their races some of them caught glimpses of the diving competition. Clara Huskin, junior swimmer, said, “It is really cool to watch the divers. We are like one big family, and we really want to support one another.”