DULUTH – Maya Kelly, arms raised above her head, held on to a custom-made platform with just her toes 70 feet in the air, facing away from the Duluth Harbor.
She pitched herself from the perch, completing a double somersault with a twist before landing straight-legged in the 60-degree water with a thwomp. The deeper the sound of the thwomp — and the less splash on impact — the better the dive.
“This is scary every time,” said Kelly, 18, a gymnast-turned-diver who competes around the world in cliff diving events.
Kelly, from Stillwater, was among a dozen divers who completed two practice dives Thursday afternoon, plunging from a temporary platform erected along the new seawall behind the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center and into 24 feet of water in the harbor. The athletes will compete in the inaugural Superior High Dive Challenge on Friday and Saturday and an exhibition Sunday as part of the Festival of Sail, a showcase of tall ships, vendors, music and one extra large rubber duck.
Spectators gathered behind the diving tower, some with phones up to record the scene. An area described as a splash zone wasn’t named as a warning about getting wet. It’s literally a good place to critique each diver’s splash.
In the seconds before her dive, Kelly said she thinks a lot. But the next part is automatic.
“My body and my mind know what to do,” she said. “I just have to trust that.”

At water level, two divers in wetsuits are in place for safety. They splash the lake water so divers can orient themselves mid-flip and then go beneath the surface when the divers submerge to make sure they are OK.