It’s her first day there, and the coaches at the Stanford Dive Club take her up to the top of the platforms, each higher than the last. They observe her reactions, see if she shows fear, and evaluate her potential. Diving is a mental sport before it becomes a physical one. Not just anyone can convince themselves to hurl their bodies off of tall platforms, but Kate Shanberge can.
Kate Shanberge is an accomplished diver, both for San Mateo and other teams she’s been a part of. Being selected to be a part of the Stanford Dive Club is an accomplishment in itself, as it is one of the premier dive clubs in the nation. She won the Far Western Diving Championships, placing first on the three-meter and one-meter springboards in 2018 and 2019. She was also on the podium at the Santa Clara Dive Meet in 2019. In her freshman year, she qualified and went to the Central Coast Section for SMHS diving.
“In the end, diving is only done because you decide to jump off the board, and you’re going against the natural human instinct of fear and just logic, honestly, and that aspect of it is what makes it a mental sport,” says Kate.
Kate discovered her love of diving after she made the transition to it from gymnastics. Her gymnastics training gave her a lot of the skills necessary to be a good diver like body control, aerial awareness, and general strength and flexibility. When she needed to give up gymnastics, diving became her new way of exercising them. Kate’s favorite dives are the two and a half off the three-meter and a reverse one and a half off the one-meter.
“Kate has demonstrated grand dedication to diving all four years of high school and has applied her skills from years of gymnastics to excel on the diving board,” says Nicky Seyfried, one of Kate’s best friends who is vastly proud of all her accomplishments.
Kate will be attending Emory University as a business major next year and she’ll be taking all the skills she’s learned from diving with her. She’s got a lot of people who are very proud of her, not just for her diving accomplishments, but also so much more, and they can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.
“I like diving because my dream as a kid has always been to fly and I think it’s a sport where you come pretty close to that, says Kate.“I think the mental aspect of diving is a good lesson for life, it gives you a good life skill of being able to control your mind and face your fears.”