Aunt Had an Easy Time Diving Into This Column

It is Olympic season. For eight days, beginning last Wednesday, there have been and will be two or three or four or five new Olympic swimmers, some from Orange County.

On Sunday in China, Costa Mesa’s Misty May completed an improbable journey with her partner Holly McPeak to earn the chance to represent the United States in beach volleyball in Sydney. A year ago May and McPeak weren’t even a team.

And also Sunday, at Mission Viejo, the U.S. Olympic diving team competed in the U.S. Summer Nationals.

The winner of the women’s platform competition was Laura Wilkinson, who scored four 10s on one dive and seems in good form to challenge for a medal next month.

Finishing second was Becky Ruehl. Ruehl dived in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and finished fourth on the platform.

Over the last four years Ruehl has won two NCAA titles, completed her degree, on time and with the highest honors, in the University of Cincinnati’s prestigious design, art and architecture program. She has also spent nearly three years undergoing rehab from rotator cuff surgery and therapy to alleviate the pain and numbness of nerve damage. When you dive 33 feet off that platform for 15 years, which is how long Ruehl has been diving, the body takes a pounding.

Now it’s time for full disclosure.

Becky is my niece. My husband, Dan Weber, is the brother of Becky’s mom, Clare. It was Dan who introduced Becky to diving. Becky had been enthused about gymnastics. She was 7 when her Uncle Dan went to watch Becky at gymnastics practice one day. What Uncle Dan saw was a bunch of little girls bouncing off the walls, not being coached very well. Uncle Dan told Becky to stop, stop now. He told his extraordinarily flexible niece to try diving.

So on Sunday, when Becky received her silver medal, there were some tears.

Not many people around U.S. Diving knew, but Becky has decided to retire. Is this a big story? Not really.

Except at this moment, with all the news about the Olympics, maybe it would be nice to know that Olympic athletes come from the neighborhood, they might live next door, and they are not always trained from toddlerhood to go for the gold.

Sometimes they just dive because it is fun.

Becky grew up in Northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Her parents, Clare and Tony, never sent their little girl away to find better coaching or better pools or more prestigious teams.

There isn’t even a platform in the Cincinnati area. Coach Charlie Casuto and Becky would drive to Lexington or Indianapolis or Columbus, two-hour trips each way, to get time on the platform. So Becky practiced more on the three-meter than the platform and when she got time on the tower, great.

Becky never was home-schooled. She never did her classwork by herself or took special classes. She went to grade school and high school just like most kids. She had boyfriends, went to proms, took family vacations. And she kept diving.

Because she wanted to.

When Becky was 11 or 12 she began winning regional and national titles but there was never a big buzz. Every year it seemed there would be some phenom diver, a Jenny Keim or Erica Sorgi. That was never Becky. But she would win.

In 1996 in Indianapolis, with a whole bunch of family around to cheer, Becky made the Olympic team. Who? That’s what many diving experts said.

Becky and Casuto were never diving insiders. Casuto fought, still fights, the idea that seems to have taken over U.S. Diving that there needs to be some national training center where all the little boys and girls would get sent, would leave home and school and friends, to become Olympians.

Never would Becky have left home to become an Olympian. When college recruiters came, Stanford and Texas wanted Becky badly, Becky didn’t go. Why would she leave Casuto and her friends and family and her perfectly normal life when she could go to college and stay with the best coach she could imagine?

At the Atlanta Olympics, as an 18-year-old, Becky finished fourth, just behind 32-year-old American Mary Ellen Clark. If the Olympic Games were scored the same as Olympic trials, Becky would have won a silver medal. But at the Olympics, the scores from the first round of preliminary dives is ultimately dropped.

Not that this bothered Becky. She never stopped smiling in Atlanta. It was the experience and not the medal. It was the chance to make new friends, march in the opening and closing ceremonies, to see new sports, to be part of the best sporting experience there is. So of course she smiled.

Before every dive she took, Becky stood at the top of the platform and smiled. She enjoyed every minute because you never know if you’ll get back. Sometimes it’s easy, when you’re 18 and healthy and at the top of that platform, to think it’s a cinch you’ll be on the Olympic team again.

But it wasn’t easy. After the surgery and rehab, Becky had just six months or so of serious preparation for the Olympic trials which were in June. She finished seventh, a triumph in itself.

Becky had also gotten a new job she loves. After the trials, she said she realized how much her body ached. It was time, Becky thought, to move on to something else. The job for starters, but also maybe other sports. She wants to try cycling and tennis. She is tired, also of some of the politics of her sport. It hurt when Becky went to the Olympic trials, a returning Olympian, one who nearly won a medal, and was mostly ignored, not invited to press conferences or much acknowledged.

So that silver medal Becky won Sunday will most likely be her last.

And today, this morning, that medal is already gone.

Four years ago Becky had met Krista Pohorenec, the sister of diver Nicole Pohorenec at another U.S. nationals. Krista has Down’s syndrome and at the nationals four years ago, Becky had given Krista her medal.

The two hadn’t seen each other until Sunday at Mission Viejo. Krista, who is 14, had made Becky a poster, had given her a big hug before the finals and said, “I know you’re going to win.”

Afterward, Becky found Krista and put the silver medal, her last, around Krista’s neck.

Becky Ruehl is an athlete who doesn’t need a medal to remind her of why she dived or what she accomplished. She dived because it was fun. Her accomplishments will always be in her heart and the hearts of her friends and her family.

The Olympics were one of those accomplishments but not the biggest or the best. The best accomplishment is being a 22-year-old who gives away her medal and walks away a winner.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com