When she gets to the pool for training at 7:45 a.m., the first thing Jill Schlabach does is take off her work clothes from the night before.
But the night before sometimes doesn`t get stripped away so easily. Not when life and death are involved, as they are in Schlabach`s job.
Schlabach is an intensive-care surgical nurse at the University of Michigan Medical Center. The patients she deals with are ”mostly in pretty tough shape.”
Clearing her mind of what she goes through in 12-hour nursing shifts is critical to Schlabach`s ability to concentrate on her sport. When you are diving from a 33-foot-high platform, mental lapses can be fatal.
”When I come to the pool, all my teammates are very understanding,”
she said. ”They allow me to vent. I tell them about everything that happened at night, the frustrations and the triumphs, and it lets me get rid of what is inside me.”
Then she can plunge headlong into the pool, where Schlabach, 25, has known more triumphs than frustrations of late.
This year has been the most successful of Schlabach`s 11-year diving career. She not only made the national team for the first time since 1985 but had two fourth places in the National Championships and won the qualifying meet for the Pan American Games on the 1-meter springboard.
”I guess I thrive on the stress,” she said after a workout at the USC Swim Stadium, where she will compete in the 10-meter platform event Thursday at the U.S. Olympic Festival.
Schlabach, from Fairfield, Ohio, had pushed the sport into the background while she pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of Cincinnati. She earned a full athletic scholarship after finishing eighth in the NCAA Championships as a sophomore, but never reached that level again.
”(Cincinnati coach) Charlie Casuto was great because he let me come to the pool and train at all hours so it wouldn`t interfere with my classes,”
she said. ”I thought I was doing what needed to be done in diving, but I wasn`t spending enough time in the pool, and I realize that now.” When she graduated in 1988, Schlabach began to feel she hadn`t done all she could in diving. That led her first to a hospital job and diving program in Pittsburgh, where the team had no one else practicing on the platform.
”That made it hard,” she said.
It was during her first of three straight appearances at an Olympic Festival, in 1989, that Schlabach met University of Michigan coach Dick Kimball. On his team, everyone practices on the platform, and one of Kimball`s diver, Cokey Smith, is national champion in the event. ”He said, `You`re welcome to dive for me,` ” Schlabach recalled. ”I found a job at the Michigan Medical Center and moved there in December 1989.”
As her diving improved, Schlabach cut back a little on work, from 36 to 28 hours per week. She puts in the hours with seven 12-hour shifts in a three- week block.
On work days, she will train from 4:10 to 6 p.m., get to work by 7 p.m., work until 7:30 a.m., go directly back to the pool, train until 9:30, go home and sleep between four and five hours, eat lunch, play with her dog and cat, do errands, then return to the pool.
On days off, she is at the pool by 5:30 a.m. Of course, she also moonlights eight-hour shifts in the emergency room to make extra cash. ”I veg out on Sundays,” she said.
A lengthy day is nothing new for Schlabach. As a teenager, she would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to make sandwiches for her father`s catering truck.
”Whatever it takes,” she said.
Lately, though, it has taken nearly all her vacation time as well. Such is the price of success that has already sent Schlabach to the FINA World Cup in Canada and a two-meet tour to the Soviet Union and will send her to next month`s Pan American Games in Cuba.
The time problems could increase as Schlabach tries to make the 1992 Olympic team. Since 1-meter springboard is not an Olympic event, her best chance is on the platform, where she finished fourth at the 1991 Nationals. Only the top two at next year`s trials will make the U.S. team.
Happily for a Soviet girl, Schlabach was able to combine nursing and diving during her trip to Moscow.
While the divers were practicing, a 12-year-old Soviet sychronized swimmer was pulled barely alive from another part of the pool. Schlabach and a U.S. team doctor rushed to her aid in a situation that became more and more chaotic with no Soviet doctor on hand.
”She was totally blue,” Schlabach said. ”I was giving her mouth-to-mouth, while they (Soviet coaches) were trying to give CPR by punching with two hands all over her body. Every time I got her breathing, they knocked the breath out of her.
”Everything worked out fine, but it was a little hard to practice diving after that.”
