Overcoming challenges a part of life for Southeast diver Christine Maynard

Southeast senior Christine Maynard loves a physical challenge.

Barrel racing? Done that. Trampoline competition? Did it, too. Gymnastics? Yep.

“I like challenges,” Maynard said. “It kind of fits me.”

While in middle school, she discovered that diving was a perfect fit for her physically and it filled her desire for a challenge. Now in her senior season diving at Southeast, her goal is to qualify for the first time for the Class 6A meet in May.

“I really believe she has a chance,” Southeast coach Maureen Hansen said. “She just loves diving, but like I told her, we’ve got make sure she has the right degree of difficulty.”

Maybe the reason Maynard adores challenges is because conquering obstacles is another part of her life.

Maynard has been deaf since birth. Maynard had meconium aspiration at birth. She spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit with a collapsed lung.

“You go through the denial, ‘Is she really deaf?’ I used to stand there and I’d just yell as loud as I could when she was sleeping,” her mother, Jane, said. “She didn’t move. ‘OK, she’s deaf.’”

Maynard’s hearing has diminished over time. She can still hear low sounds and reads lips well. Her interpreter, Laura Rule, helps her through classes so she doesn’t miss information from teachers.

But Maynard speaks for herself. And what she says is usually tinged with sarcasm.

“I’m very sarcastic, to be honest,” Maynard said. “I try my best to be funny in a good way. If I offend anyone, I try to explain it so we can laugh about it.

“I can be serious. But I’d rather be sarcastic. When it comes to serious people, it just doesn’t work out well when I’m trying to be sarcastic with them.”

Rule discovered quickly that Maynard loves laughter.

“She’s hilarious,” Rule said. “There’s life and high school drama, and she can laugh her way through it. She can make a joke and make things lighter. She’ll tell me what happens and then she’ll make a joke and she’ll have a lot of expressions that go with it.

“The two of us should be paying attention in class, instead we’re sitting there laughing.”

The two, who are sitting across a table from each other, start laughing.

Being deaf is a part of Maynard’s life, but it doesn’t define her.

The only time she considers herself having a disability is when she’s shopping and she has to let a sales person know that, yes, she can’t hear.

And she understands that certain careers might not be an option, such as becoming a surgeon. She notes that she would struggle to know someone is speaking to her because they wear masks in surgery.

But when swimming and diving for Southeast, Maynard, who finished third in the 2014 City League diving competition, doesn’t consider herself as having a disability.

“We treat each other as we are,” Maynard said. “We will always involve you, no matter what. I feel really close to my teammates. For me being deaf, to them it’s nothing to them.

“It’s actually pretty cool. You connect with people, and you don’t have to think about your disability to be with them. You get to be with them no matter what.”

In a race, Maynard can’t hear the starter’s horn, so it is hooked up to a light that signals when the horn blasts. Hansen drops her raised arm just in case the light doesn’t work.

While swimming is enjoyable, Maynard loves diving. She’s able to focus on each aspect of a dive. If she doesn’t fine-tune a dive, she knows there will be pain.

“If you do a double for the first time, and you smack on the water, it’s a pain that you cannot explain,” she said. “It’s like you’re on fire.

“But you get up and you do it again. You constantly do it until you get it right or get it perfect.”

When she started diving, she feared the inward dive. The diver stands with her back to the water at the edge of the board, jumps out and dives.

“I thought I was going to hit my head,” she said. “… When I starting doing gainers, I think it was my fifth time, I was too focused on the walk and I was this close to hitting my head on the board.

“But I said, ‘OK. Let’s do it again.’”

Maynard has been able to call on her experience in competing in trampoline and gymnastics. She’s able to contort her body while flying through the air, and she knows when and how to land.

She also had experienced some tough lessons.

“In (gymnastics) I landed on my neck a couple times. I learned to get up and ‘oh, it’s nothing,’ and do it again. If you don’t learn from pain, you can’t really perform it,” she said.

Maynard’s mom knows how strong her daughter is and relishes how she approaches challenges.

“She’s an overcomer,” her mother said.

This story was originally published April 2, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Overcoming challenges a part of life for Southeast diver Christine Maynard."