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Deaf Carrollton school's diving coach teaches success | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News
The water in the makeshift hot tub burns. Genette Bergman sees the steam rise as if it's a boiling pot and refuses to hop in and loosen up for her first dive at morning practice. Her coach, Eric Ognibene, finds this hilarious.
"I try to teach them mental relaxation," he says. "Best way to do it? Laugh."
Laugh. Have fun. Perhaps it seems too good to be true, especially when Ognibene says this attitude, plus the pool, helped him accept his deafness.
But listen. Diving boards are snapping from the weight of bounding teenagers, and water is ripping from their dismounts into the pool on this end of the natatorium. A whistle is blowing, and kids are screaming as they shoot a basketball toward a hoop on the other end.
Ognibene can hear it but not fully. Hearing aids, coupled with his lip-reading ability, restore most of his communication needs and have since his childhood.
He could live and learn like everyone else. Except at the pool. Ognibene removed the hearing aids there. He dived in silence.
Diving would bring him a Texas state championship, All-American honors and a spot on the U.S. national team in the late 1980s. It would lead him to his calling, his joy, to coaching.
In 12 years at the Carrollton schools, he's helped at least one diver make state each season. Bergman, of Carrollton Newman Smith, is going this year, along with four divers from Carrollton Creekview.
"Diving has brought him so much happiness," says his mother, Margaret Ognibene. "He wants the others to feel that, too."
Making a splash
When Ognibene dived, body twisting and flipping into the final descent, he created his own splashing sound in his head. He couldn't hear it naturally.
"I'd always say," Ognibene says, 'the splash sounded good.' "
Divers listen. Former Olympic diver Greg Louganis would often say this. They listen for the wind, and they listen to the subtle whoosh of their bodies, a signal needed for timing flips and entry into the water.
Ognibene, a San Antonio native, could never hear. Margaret caught a fluke case of the German measles during her pregnancy, so he couldn't hear anything, except high-pitched whistles that would make most people writhe and cover their ears.
Ognibene's parents enrolled him in the country's top school for the hearing-impaired. By age 6, he attended regular schools. By 8, he began diving.
In school, he found success by asking questions, taking his time and learning by experience. In college, he had to sit in the front rows of lecture halls and could never take a class from a thick-bearded professor.
"I couldn't read their lips," he said.
The same rules applied for diving. He had to slightly alter his course from the norm.
While other divers listened, he spotted and he felt and he guessed. And he repeated it again. Then again. The learning always took longer for him.
This caused frustration for Ognibene and his coaches. But they stuck with him. Ognibene won the 1982 Texas state championship. He won the Big 8 Conference championship four times for Nebraska. He made the U.S. national team, the first deaf diver to do so, and dived in events like the Pan-American Games.
Ognibene believes those coaches put him on the fast track, from the brunt of kids' taunts, to the medal stand at dive meets. They brought him the joy.
He wanted to do the same for others.
Sharing his gift
Brandon Alexander attended the 5A regional swim meet in Mansfield a year ago. During warm-ups, a balding man who looked like a broad-shouldered Andre Agassi began leaping off the diving boards, enjoying his flight through the air as much as any of the high school kids.
Of course, it was Ognibene.
"It was pretty crazy," Alexander said. "He gave you something to work for."
Alexander will dive at the state meet this weekend. He had never dived before this season. Neither had the other three state-bound Creekview divers – Sarrie Zinszer, Andrea Ehlers and Michael Bennett. Ognibene has coached multiple national team members at top clubs, but his work with novice divers defines his career here.
"He certainly gets them going quickly," Highland Park coach Jesse Cole says.
Those familiar with Ognibene point to his sunny attitude as a reason for success. Cole always identifies him because of that laugh. In diving, a sport where you learn from constant criticism, it's necessary.
But diving is also a sport of subtlety. A kilobyte twist of the body is the difference between first and fourth place. Good coaches must see this. It's visual.
"In some respects," says friend and Carrollton Newman Smith/Creekview swim coach Jon Cleveland, "his disability has helped him because he's used his other senses a lot more."
The water in the makeshift hot tub burns. Genette Bergman sees the steam rise as if it's a boiling pot and refuses to hop in and loosen up for her first dive at morning practice. Her coach, Eric Ognibene, finds this hilarious.
"I try to teach them mental relaxation," he says. "Best way to do it? Laugh."
Laugh. Have fun. Perhaps it seems too good to be true, especially when Ognibene says this attitude, plus the pool, helped him accept his deafness.
But listen. Diving boards are snapping from the weight of bounding teenagers, and water is ripping from their dismounts into the pool on this end of the natatorium. A whistle is blowing, and kids are screaming as they shoot a basketball toward a hoop on the other end.
Ognibene can hear it but not fully. Hearing aids, coupled with his lip-reading ability, restore most of his communication needs and have since his childhood.
He could live and learn like everyone else. Except at the pool. Ognibene removed the hearing aids there. He dived in silence.
Diving would bring him a Texas state championship, All-American honors and a spot on the U.S. national team in the late 1980s. It would lead him to his calling, his joy, to coaching.
In 12 years at the Carrollton schools, he's helped at least one diver make state each season. Bergman, of Carrollton Newman Smith, is going this year, along with four divers from Carrollton Creekview.
"Diving has brought him so much happiness," says his mother, Margaret Ognibene. "He wants the others to feel that, too."
Making a splash
When Ognibene dived, body twisting and flipping into the final descent, he created his own splashing sound in his head. He couldn't hear it naturally.
"I'd always say," Ognibene says, 'the splash sounded good.' "
Divers listen. Former Olympic diver Greg Louganis would often say this. They listen for the wind, and they listen to the subtle whoosh of their bodies, a signal needed for timing flips and entry into the water.
Ognibene, a San Antonio native, could never hear. Margaret caught a fluke case of the German measles during her pregnancy, so he couldn't hear anything, except high-pitched whistles that would make most people writhe and cover their ears.
Ognibene's parents enrolled him in the country's top school for the hearing-impaired. By age 6, he attended regular schools. By 8, he began diving.
In school, he found success by asking questions, taking his time and learning by experience. In college, he had to sit in the front rows of lecture halls and could never take a class from a thick-bearded professor.
"I couldn't read their lips," he said.
The same rules applied for diving. He had to slightly alter his course from the norm.
While other divers listened, he spotted and he felt and he guessed. And he repeated it again. Then again. The learning always took longer for him.
This caused frustration for Ognibene and his coaches. But they stuck with him. Ognibene won the 1982 Texas state championship. He won the Big 8 Conference championship four times for Nebraska. He made the U.S. national team, the first deaf diver to do so, and dived in events like the Pan-American Games.
Ognibene believes those coaches put him on the fast track, from the brunt of kids' taunts, to the medal stand at dive meets. They brought him the joy.
He wanted to do the same for others.
Sharing his gift
Brandon Alexander attended the 5A regional swim meet in Mansfield a year ago. During warm-ups, a balding man who looked like a broad-shouldered Andre Agassi began leaping off the diving boards, enjoying his flight through the air as much as any of the high school kids.
Of course, it was Ognibene.
"It was pretty crazy," Alexander said. "He gave you something to work for."
Alexander will dive at the state meet this weekend. He had never dived before this season. Neither had the other three state-bound Creekview divers – Sarrie Zinszer, Andrea Ehlers and Michael Bennett. Ognibene has coached multiple national team members at top clubs, but his work with novice divers defines his career here.
"He certainly gets them going quickly," Highland Park coach Jesse Cole says.
Those familiar with Ognibene point to his sunny attitude as a reason for success. Cole always identifies him because of that laugh. In diving, a sport where you learn from constant criticism, it's necessary.
But diving is also a sport of subtlety. A kilobyte twist of the body is the difference between first and fourth place. Good coaches must see this. It's visual.
"In some respects," says friend and Carrollton Newman Smith/Creekview swim coach Jon Cleveland, "his disability has helped him because he's used his other senses a lot more."