That Time I Attempted a Half-Gainer

9 min readJan 9, 2021

Summer camp is as fun a time as anyone can have in their lives. It’s a chance to grow and find out who you are as a person. Sometimes the answer comes to you over time and sometimes you are bludgeoned with it in an instant.

I was a person who lived by the theoretical, stuck in my head, believing in what could be done. I had not yet learned about the laws of physics or kinesiology or even how every human body is unique and, thus, capable of different things. I figured the only reason someone couldn’t do anything was because they simply didn’t want to or they hadn’t studied the technique enough.

Evan Kaplan was the resident sex symbol at Sharon Country Day Camp. He was like a teenaged Burt Reynolds in the 80s — tanned, athletic, bold. He also was a great guy, whom everyone looked up to. A few years old than me, he took me under his wing, the older brother I never had, and introduced me to classic rock music, showed me how to approach a girl, and taught me about life, in general. But he never did teach me how to do a back flip, not that I asked.

On typical days, we would end the camp day down at Lake Shocounda (SHAron COUNtry DAy, get it?), a man-made lake situated in the middle of the beautiful campground set aback from the main drag by a dirt road extending to the main thoroughfare in the Boston suburb. There was a swim for the girls followed by a swim for the boys. And when it was especially hot, a “Beach Day” was called, combining the two swims for double the pleasure, twice the fun. The whole camp was there.

In the middle of this extra long swim, there would be a “counselor swim” which allowed us guardians (frying on top of the docks) to cool off by jumping into the lake and frolicking for a few minutes.

This began a tradition where the metaphorical spotlight would shine on Third Raft, a ten-by-ten square piece of wood buoyed by styrofoam floats in the middle and deepest point of the lake. It was the only raft that had a spring board, and for the young kinder, represented the pinnacle of their swim education, the place they were finally allowed to go when they became adept enough.

Many counselors would take advantage of the board for extra height on their dives, but everything stopped when Evan and Jay Brooker had their chances.

Jay was a large boy, like a white Fat Albert, yet agile. He was a great swimmer and lifeguard whose main presentation off the springboard was a belly flop of epic proportions. I think some water from his splashes is still landing along the banks of the lake to this day.

Evan, on the other hand, impressed with a variety of dives. He got enough height to make it seem like he was in a flight suit, arching his back so that at his highest point, his feet could almost touch his head. And then — SMACK!! — he would land in the most painful of flops, the water not rising as high as Jay’s, but the red mark on Evan’s chest a badge of honor as he emerged to huge applause.

He mixed it up with a straight dive, a jackknife, a flip, a flip into a flop (the flip-flop), and the most impressive of all — a half-gainer. This dangerous maneuver was when instead of flipping with a forward summersault, you run off the board (getting speed so as to clear the deck), kick your feet out in front of you and then over your head (a running back flip), and land with your chest down on the water for a belly flop.

Eventually, their acts grew into something Barnum and/or Bailey would be proud of. And like many great solo acts, they sometimes went onto stage together. Evan would perform some of his best dives launching from Jay’s shoulders.

Sometimes they would jump together in tandem. Evan would be hoisted onto his shoulders and Jay would walk cautiously to the edge of the raft where the duo would synchronize their jumps. Evan would spring far out from Jay so they did not hit each other and they would each hit the water at the same time. SPLASH! — the double flop!

That was typically the show’s finale. There were others who tried the flop, and others who simply went with a cannonball or flip, but none reached the adulation nor spectacle of those two.

After a few years as a counselor, I began to make a name for myself. During rainy days, I was a hit at talent shows as “The Great Wasifi,” basically a take-off on Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent,” where I would guess the question to answers provided on an envelope.

So when I made my way to Third Raft during one Beach Day, it was really just to use the spring board. Evan and Jay did their show and I came up in line next.

That’s when the chant started, “Wah-sif! Wah-sif!! Wasif! WASIF! WASIF!!!”

I was nervous. This was major league stuff, all eyes on me. I could not just go out and do a normal dive, graceful or otherwise. Boring dives that looked like we were just learning — toes over the edge, arms by our ears, head down — were not acceptable. They expected greatness. If we didn’t physically threaten our livelihood, they would boo and boo mercilessly. Oh, sure some of the less prideful counselors could deal with it. But I had a reputation.

I was not to be booed. I let the chant go a moment more, soaking it all in like Hulk Hogan used to do before pummeling his opponent in fake wrestling. Suddenly I found myself running for the board. This was before I figured out what I was going to do. It would not be a belly flop as I was not much of a belly-flopper since they tended to be painful. To quote Daffy Duck, “I’m not like other people. I don’t like pain; it hurts me.”

I’d studied Evan long enough to know how he did a half-gainer. He would kick his feet out in front of him and arch his back with his arms overhead and look for the water beneath him to enter it with a basic dive. And this was going through my head as I ran — legs, arch, extend arms, look for water. . . LEGS, ARCH, EXTEND ARMS, LOOK FOR WATER. It would be easy for me. After all, I was someone who could bench press my body weight.

I reached the end of the board and threw my legs in front of me, the sky above me. Next on the to do list was to arch my — SMACK!!!

All of a sudden, all the breath in my lungs left me. I didn’t know which was was up. Fortunately, gravity works less under water and I didn’t continue to plummet. The lake was only nine feet deep so worst case, it would not be difficult to find my body. I wonder if they’ve stopped cheering long enough to question if I needed saving. I frantically paddled my arms displacing as much water as possible before reaching the surface with the largest GULP of air I’d taken in my life.

The crescendo of the cheers was deafening. . . or maybe that was the ringing in my ears. Fortunately, the water was murky because I realized my bathing suit was hanging around my ankles. I reached down to pull them up still gulping for air as I kicked as hard as I could back to the raft.

The first one to greet me as I made it back to the raft was Evan. “Way-Sif! That was amazing!”

“I can’t breathe,” I said. Though no one cared. It was not about me at that moment, but about the audience’s amusement.

Apparently, I did the first ever BACK-flop in camp (and perhaps world) history. I was a success. And I may not have learned who I was at that moment, but I learned who I wasn’t. I was a thinker, a comedian, “The Great Wasifi!” I was not an agile athlete. There’s a reason no one else was doing the half-gainer — it was very difficult to do. It takes a lot of practice… or at least SOME practice.

It was like at the end of “Daffy’s Special Trick” where he blows himself up on stage and receives a huge ovation. “That’s terrific, Daffy!” Bugs tells him. “They loved it! They want more!”

“I know, I know. But I can only do it once,” says Daffy as he floats toward heaven as a spirit.