Fabian Stepinski walked slowly to the end of the springboard and set his feet, preparing for his second dive. His first hadn't gone as planned, but he knew that he could—and had to—work past the resulting anxiety.
"Somehow I was able to manage and to use this nervous feeling to my advantage," said Stepinski, a first-year diver at the University of North Carolina. "Once I was in that flow, I could really perform dive after dive."
Stepinski pushed through, drawing energy from the large crowd in attendance. He finished the 3-meter diving competition first among eight divers from UNC and the University of Virginia, where the meet was taking place.