On this particular day, practice at the Santa Clara International Swim Center is easy. The Willow Glen youth and member of the Santa Clara Divers team has just finished the summer season.

He has been diving for five years, three of them with his current team and coach Pei-Ling Gu.

He recently returned from competition at the Speedo National Championships in Huntersville, N.C. Divers from throughout the United States participated in the event. To qualify for the finals at the event, he had to finish as one of the top eight in the country. Robbie placed 10th, missing the finals by six points.

"It's not bad for his first time there," Patrice Taylor, Robbie's mother, says. "Every year, he's been showing steady progress. Last year, he didn't even make it to national championships. This year, he made it and placed 10th."

The youths that make it to the Speedo championships and qualify are the best in the country. The top two in each age group will be considered for the 2008 Olympics.

She is confident that Robbie will do better next year. "He's come far from where he started from," she says. "He's a fast learner and is very graceful--that's his specialty."

Gu, a national diving coach and diver in her native China, has trained Olympic-caliber divers.

Although the season has ended, Robbie will continue to practice through the school year.

He will be a high school sophomore this fall at Bellarmine College Preparatory, where he's the school's first diver since 1987.

"At my first Bellarmine meet, the boys locker room door opened up and about 60 swimmers on the team came out before me and in a low tone began chanting: 'We've got a diver, We've got a diver' until it became this loud roar: 'Finally!' " Robbie says.

"Robbie was more nervous about the chanting than the actual diving," Taylor says. After every dive, the team cheered and roared for him.

"The Bellarmine swim team was wonderful about incorporating him into the team and it gave him a whole new perspective," Taylor says. "Diving for the club team is more about the individual than the team. Here, he's getting a new idea about what team sports are like."

Robbie took third place at the Central Coast Section diving meet that took place at Stanford University on May 14, during his freshman year.

Fellow diver Bryan Dunmire, who dives for the Wilcox High School team in Santa Clara, says this year's CCS event was special for another reason.

"I got to compete against Robbie," he says. "We have a friendly and respectful rivalry."

Robbie and Bryan are the only boys on Gu's team and bonded almost automatically.

"We push each other, we better ourselves; we're good friends. We get to root for each other. This year, though, we got to compete against each other. I had the pressure to win because I am older, but I'm ready to pass the CCS torch over to him."

Robbie acknowledges the friendly rivalry but says it's not serious. He enjoys diving but not necessarily the competitiveness.

Robbie struggles for the words to describe what the sport does emotionally for him. He looks to the pool and suddenly says, "It makes me feel free being up there."

Future Diver

Robbie was first introduced to diving at the age of 11 while visiting his grandparents' home in Arnold.

"My dad used to be a high school swimmer and diver and he was doing a 2 ¹/2 dive off the diving board at the house," Robbie says.

Taylor says that when her husband, Tom, dove into the water, people began to applaud.

"In that moment, Robbie knew that's what he wanted to do," Taylor says. "My husband went to James Lick High School and dove for the team. They didn't have particularly good coaching but he did really well."

Robbie's father is self-employed and his job makes it difficult to attend all the meets, but he came up with a solution; he earned his coaching credential and helps Gu coach the divers on Saturdays.

"It makes him feel young again," Robbie's mother says. "It's fun that he can still dive at 40-something and now he gets to do dives with his son."

Robbie soon became a member of Gu's diving team.

"With practice, any diver can be great but it's a big monetary commitment and the families have to make sacrifices," Gu says.

Robbie acknowledges that being competitive requires dedication and lots of work.

"You practice a lot," Robbie says. "If you haven't practiced for a while, even a few days, you lose some of your talent and you have to work hard to gain it back."

The sport also has an element of danger.

"If you're not touching or using the board, you lose your timing and can get hurt," his mother says.

But that dedication can pay off later on in life.

"Diving gives the kids confidence in themselves both socially and professionally," Gu says.

"During meets, I listen to music a lot," Robbie says. "I lay down and keep rested. I don't watch other divers. I dive my own way. Looking at scores is the worst because it kills your concentration."

Bryan says meets are brutal. He too listens to music.

"It helps me relax throughout the meet. I completely forget about diving until I'm up there," he says. "Your dives are so spread apart, every 15 minutes, it's difficult to get yourself back into the mindset. "

As for the future, Robbie is contemplating the 2012 Olympics as a possibility. But before that, he has to focus on school. "I want to get into a good college to get a good education," he says. "And I can do that through diving."

The United States Olympic diving team has been the world leader since 1920, earning 128 metals won out of 268 that have been issued--47 gold, 40 silver and 41 bronze. China, its main competitor, has won 29 medals total.

Although the team is one of the premier teams in the world, diving in the United States is still an obscure sport.

"A problem with diving in America is that there are so many lawyers because of the potential danger involved," Bryan says. "Communities are taking more diving boards out than putting them in. If more people took up diving as a sport, its acceptance would be easier."

It is also a complicated sport.

In diving, there are six different types of dives--forward, backward, reverse, inward, twisting and arm stand dives. Divers are judged on approach, takeoff, elevation, execution and entry.

Dives are scored on degrees of difficulty. Each dive gets progressively harder. The judges multiply the degree of difficulty by the score, eliminating the highest and the lowest, to come up with each diver's net total. Scores are on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 the top.

Diving competition include one and three meter springboard events and platform events from 5, 7 ¹/2 and 10 meters.

According to USAdiving.com, diving began in the 17th century along with the gymnastic movement in Germany and Sweden. During the summer, gymnasts would bring their equipment to the beaches and practice over water. This why divers consider the sport closer to gymnastics than swimming.