School was never high on my priority list. I didn’t enjoy many of the subjects, so I did only what I needed to do to get by. Had I applied myself, I easily could have been an A or B student. But in reality I was a B or C student who was more interested in being the funny and ornery kid in class than in actually learning. I was so silly and immature during my eighth-grade year that a teacher once told me, “You’re going into high school. These high school kids are going to think you’re a joke.”
When I did get to high school, I was more concerned with being in the in-crowd than anything else, and I was terribly enslaved by my insecurities. I was consumed with what other people thought of me. I was consumed by how I looked. I wanted everyone to like me, and I wanted to be the popular guy in school. I achieved some of that because of my athletic success, but it came at the expense of being totally preoccupied with myself and constantly worrying about what everybody else thought. For me, in that big suburban high school, social status was everything.
The older I got, the more school began to interfere with my training as an elite athlete. So during the second semester of my junior year, my parents, coach, and I decided that I’d stop attending high school and begin online schooling at home. That switch was a tremendous relief because I was so tired of the drama that came along with the life I was trying to live as the popular kid.
The homeschooling really weeded out a lot of the busywork, solving another issue that had annoyed me in high school. From my perspective as an immature high school student, it seemed that teachers just gave us work to do because they were trying to keep us busy. But no more. The independent, online homeschooling suited my personality. I had an easily identifiable objective. For example, I knew I’d be done with a class after doing, say, eight assignments and taking two exams. I could see the end goal and the steps I’d need to take. Sometimes I would procrastinate on my work, but typically I did a good job of getting it done.
My training regimen was intense during my last couple of years of high school. I’d get up at 5:30 a.m. and spend half an hour on the elliptical before eating breakfast and heading to practice at 7:30 a.m. We’d do two hours of dry-land work and then take a two-hour break. Sometimes I’d spend that break doing my schoolwork (which was really the purpose of that break), but much of the time I’d spend goofing off with my teammates. Then, in the afternoons, I did work in the pool, then weight training or Pilates, then ballet, which helped with strength and flexibility. We were working out nonstop on a daily basis. It was difficult, but I was so obsessed with my body image and the way I looked that I was willing to suffer through it. My body would collapse if I tried to train like that now.
As a young diver, though, I completely bought in to the mind-set that my appearance meant everything—especially in my sport, where the judging is based on how a dive looks and how you present yourself. If you look like you’re out of shape, it looks like you don’t care. Your scores may suffer because of it. It’s easy to see that the best competitors at meets are in tip-top shape, and it’s easy to start comparing yourself to others. Divers can become obsessed with being the fittest, strongest, skinniest, most cut athlete out there, and I was no different. That’s one reason I was motivated to work so hard.
After practicing and training, I’d usually get home about four thirty in the afternoon. Then I would have the rest of the day to eat, do homework, or hang out with my friends or family. For me, homeschooling was much easier than the traditional schooling. I think it helped prepare me for college because it taught me to learn independently. I still went back to my old high school for proms and dances, but I loved the year and a half I spent as a homeschool student. When it came time for me to go to college, I felt adequately prepared. I never felt like the dumb kid in class, but I also didn’t feel like I was the smartest. I was basically an average student.
I started my college freshman year a few days late because of the Beijing Olympics. My first classes began on a Monday, but I didn’t get back from Beijing until Tuesday. I landed at about 3:00 p.m. that day, and by 6:00 p.m. I had my car packed up and ready to go. I left home at 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday to head to my first class at 7:30 a.m. Though the Beijing experience was a major disappointment, I still was looking forward to college. Moving there and starting fresh helped temper the sadness I was feeling, even if that tempering was short-lived.
In a way, going to college was humbling for me, at least at first. I was in a completely new environment with people who didn’t know me, so I didn’t conduct myself with my usual cockiness and swagger. In my very first class (a speech class), my instructor asked me where I was during the previous session I had missed. I told him I was overseas. He kept digging, so I told him I was competing overseas. He probed further, so I finally told him I was at the Olympics. I was pleased with myself for being humble enough not to come right out and trumpet the fact that I was an Olympian. At the same time, I was glad he kept asking.
It’s difficult to explain exactly how I wanted people to see me. I didn’t want to be treated differently because I was an elite athlete and an Olympian. But I also wanted them to know that I was. Maybe that sounds silly, but I think that’s human nature. At the end of the day, we want everything to be about us. When it fed my desire to be seen and recognized, I wanted it. When it didn’t serve that purpose, I wanted to be more anonymous. I wanted to have control over my circumstances to serve my own felt needs in the moment.
That speech class turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected. It should have been easy because I had spoken in front of people before. But I was constantly nervous. For my second speech, I was on edge. I wanted to feel more comfortable in my presentation so much that I actually thought about pounding some beers before giving my speech to take the edge off and make me loose. But I didn’t follow through for a couple reasons: one, I feared it would mess me up for the rest of the day; and two, it was seven thirty in the morning.
Going away to college was also a freeing experience for me. I loved my parents, but now I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was going or when I’d be home. I had a social life for once because I wasn’t training all the time. College allowed me to be somewhat normal.
As an NCAA Division I athlete, I was required to spend time at Purdue’s “study tables” for a certain number of hours every week until I proved I no longer needed them. The study tables are located in a complex Purdue built specifically for athletes, where they scan in, pick a seat at a table or desk, spend their allotted time studying, and then scan out. That system monitors the amount of time you spend studying. If your grade point average is above 2.5, you don’t have to go to the study tables. If it’s under 2.5, you have to spend five to ten hours a week there. Tutors are on call to help with several subjects. If you need help with a particular class, you just step outside the room where you are studying and go to see a tutor. I had a tutor in math, because I hate math.
In addition to a regular academic advisor, all athletes at Purdue had an athletic academic advisor. I met with mine on a weekly basis, letting her know what my assignments were and how I was doing in my classes. Her job was to make sure I was staying on task. As I said, for the most part, I was an average student. My biggest challenge that year was time management. I struggled at first with learning how to balance my coursework with my competition schedule, but I made strides the longer I was at school. The key for me was not procrastinating on my work and keeping open channels of communication with my professors.
Dorm life at Purdue was a blast. When I got to my room and met my roommate, Thomas Wilson, I was pleased because it was clear he wanted to be the cool guy, just like I did. I noticed vomit on the chair from the night before, so Thomas had certainly jumped into the party lifestyle quickly. As I got to know him better, though, I discovered something about him that was at odds with his party-guy image. He’d had some Christian influences in his life, and he professed to be a believer. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but he had a lot of Bibles and other Christian knick-knacks on his shelf. This component to his life made me a bit curious but nothing more. I didn’t want to go to his church. I didn’t want to go to Fellowship of Christian Athletes with him. I was fine, thanks.
Thomas and I ended up being great friends and partners in crime. We behaved like juveniles in the dorms, ripping stuff off the wall, stealing people’s towels in the showers, whatever we could do for fun. Of course, sin typically is fun for a season. And for me, that sin was extremely fun.
Thomas, though he professed to be a Christian, often didn’t live his life in a way that portrayed Christ when he was a freshman. But when he came back for his sophomore year, he had thoroughly changed. Now that I have the eyes to see it, it’s clear he had been redeemed from the life he was living. He had decided to be faithful in following Christ. That was awful for me because I wanted the roommate I’d had my freshman year. I wanted the Thomas who would drink with me and live that crazy college lifestyle with me. But that wasn’t him anymore. We grew apart for the time being, but God had a purpose for him in my life that I couldn’t yet see.
Of course, I wasn’t at Purdue to raise Cain in the dorms and to party on the weekends, though I did plenty of both. I was at Purdue to be an NCAA Division I diver. Once I got back from Beijing, I was supposed to take a couple of weeks off, but I was so excited to get going that I was back at it after a week. Since I had been on the world stage, NCAA wasn’t that big of a deal for me. I’d go through dry spells, but typically I won every competition, whether it was the 1-meter, the 3-meter, or the platform. On rare occasions I finished second, but first place was the norm.
Providing unintentional comic relief for my team seemed to be another of my responsibilities. During one of my first competitions, I failed a dive on the 1-meter. That means I didn’t complete the dive and scored a zero. I might have scored higher if I had done a cannonball instead. I came out of the dive and landed like an idiot, “stapling” the water. That’s where your hands and your feet hit the water at about the same time. Not good. The following weekend, I failed another dive. The team loved it. It was humiliating to me, but it was highly amusing to my teammates.
We used a video system called Dartfish that recorded all our dives and allowed us to go back, play the dives in slow motion, and analyze them. Those two failed dives, of course, were in there. My teammates loved watching those dives and laughing mercilessly at my expense. At first it was funny, since I was an Olympian and shouldn’t have been doing dives like that. But then it got to be like a broken record. I thought, Okay, guys, just stop. Yeah, we’ve seen this a hundred times.
With those early failed dives out of my system, I started winning again. At Big Ten competitions, I won Big Ten Diver of the Week regularly, consistently sweeping all three diving events—the 1-meter and 3-meter springboard and the 10-meter platform. At the NCAA diving championships held at Texas A&M, I finished second in the 1-meter but then took both the 3-meter and the 10-meter titles. Purdue named me its Athlete of the Year as a freshman. The university’s alumni magazine even did a cover story on me that year, which pumped me up even more:
Much more than a freshman phenom, Boudia possessed such global exposure that some were surprised he opted to attend Purdue in the first place. To think of him as a blue-chip recruit might be akin to wondering how Kobe and LeBron (two famous first names in the National Basketball Association) would have fared in college hoops. By 18 years of age, Boudia was already a world-class athlete near the top of his game. He was named 2008 USA Diving Athlete of the Year. From 2006 through 2008, Boudia and Thomas Finchum, his partner in the synchronized 10-meter platform, medaled in 14 international events, including 10 consecutive events. Prior to that, in 2004, before either athlete could legally drive, they dove to a third place finish at the Olympic Trials in St. Louis. Last summer, the duo finished fifth in the event in Beijing, less than five points away from a bronze medal.1
I was the big man on campus and was living the dream. Not all the athletes at Purdue knew me, but I thought they should because of what I had accomplished. And I did it all despite putting on some weight because of my drinking and being undisciplined outside the pool. Oh, I did the workouts. I lifted the weights and did what Adam Soldati and my weight coach told me to do. I performed what was required of me in the pool. Except for weight training, my training outside of the pool was a different story.
I wasn’t taking care of my body or eating well. At the dorms, I ate whatever I felt like eating. I drank with friends just about every weekend. I wanted to be part of the social world that surrounded those weekend parties. Occasionally I’d even get talked into skipping my Friday-morning class after partying with a fraternity on a Thursday night. I didn’t need much convincing. I knew I still had to perform in the classroom, but I also knew how much class I could miss without putting me in jeopardy of getting a D or an F.
I fully embraced the party lifestyle, regardless of its effects on my health and my obligations at the school. I had stopped smoking marijuana in high school because it was hurting my body, and I knew I could get drug tested. Purdue even tested us at the beginning of my freshman year. But a few weeks later some friends and I decided we wanted to smoke. I hadn’t done it in years, but that Sunday night, I got high. I figured I was okay and that we wouldn’t be tested again anytime soon.
Imagine my alarm the next day in practice when they announced a random drug test. I was freaking out. A few of my teammates had gotten high with me, so I knew they were in trouble as well. After practice, I stood in the shower and tried to drink as much of the shower water as I could to dilute my urine. The effort proved fruitless, and I failed the test. I was put on a probation schedule, meaning I was tested periodically throughout that year until I could prove that I wasn’t smoking marijuana.
Now that I can look back at it, I see that incident as evidence of Galatians 6:7–8: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” I did something stupid and was sowing to my own flesh. So I reaped the consequences of that action. God allowed me to reap those consequences not because he didn’t like me but because he knew what I needed.
Testing positive was an eye-opener for me, and it was my first strike with Adam. I was terrified of how he would respond. I was expecting a good tongue-lashing and lecturing, but that’s not what Adam did. He didn’t point his finger at me and tell me I was a bad kid. Instead, he handled it compassionately, extending grace to me and giving me what I didn’t deserve. He also told me not to let it happen again.
Letting Adam down was traumatizing. I never want to let my coach down. So I made a point not to get in trouble with the authorities again. The episode didn’t change my heart, but it did serve to modify my external behavior for a while.
My success in diving at Purdue helped to soften the blow from Beijing, but I continued to be more and more consumed with myself. My highs were high and my lows were low. I lived by how I felt. When I was annoyed, everyone was annoying to me. When I was happy, everyone was delightful to me. My heart was on my sleeve, and people could tell exactly what was going on in my life by how I acted toward them.
Winning at the collegiate level provided some temporary, though fleeting, satisfaction. I’d think, I won Big Ten Athlete of the Week again? Oh, sweet! Then the certificate went in the locker with the rest of them, and that was that. I was pleased with how I was performing, but being a successful NCAA diver was not the ultimate goal. It was a stepping-stone toward winning an Olympic gold medal. That dream was still intact, even after Beijing.
My time in the NCAA was an important and pivotal step in my life. It validated my decision to go to college instead of turning professional. As a college diver, I was competing almost every single weekend—thirty or forty times a year. Had I turned professional, I would have been competing only about ten or fifteen times a year. That volume of competitions helped me tweak my routine and really learn how to compete as an athlete. It also made me more comfortable in high-stakes competitions because I had walked through the scenario so many times before. The NCAA provided a safe place for me to develop and hone my mental game.
While I continued to focus on my gold-medal goal, I encountered a different mind-set in Adam’s coaching. He slowly began to teach me exactly what it meant to train and have a goal, but he emphasized how important it was to be process oriented instead of results oriented. Adam always said it was not his job to make a diver a champion, but to create an environment where a champion can be made. He did just that. He created an environment where I could succeed and get to an even higher level. But he wasn’t going to promise to make me a champion. It was all up to me.
It took me a while to get used to that approach because I was so focused on winning everything. The gold medal at the Olympics was my outcome goal. Now, how would I do that? Adam brought back to life the early counseling I’d gotten from my sports psychologist. Over time, I had abandoned process thinking, but he encouraged me to value the process and the journey to the goal, not just the goal itself. He also applied a lot of biblical principles in his coaching—principles that I had no idea were biblical.
For example, Adam talks about the “principle of the path,” telling his athletes that they get to choose their path, but they don’t get to choose the destination. Their direction determines where they end up, not their intentions.2 When athletes choose to be lazy and not complete their assignments, they are choosing a path of destruction that will lead to poor grades and possibly getting kicked out of school. When they choose to do hard things, they are setting themselves up for success. That’s an example straight from Deuteronomy 30:19: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” I wanted nothing to do with God at the time, yet Adam was laying a foundation for that relationship without preaching at me.
At the end of my freshman year I decided I wanted to stay at Purdue and train with Adam and the rest of the team over the summer. Purdue had an accelerated term called a Maymester, so I enrolled in a class and moved into an apartment with some friends. But the class was difficult and the training regimen was exhausting. I grew tired of the routine after several weeks; I think I attended two class sessions before I dropped out. It was too much at the time. So I went to Adam and told him that I wanted to move back home and train with my old coach during the summer. He was fine with that, and I moved out of the apartment about three days after moving in and headed home to Noblesville. The summer launched me even further into despair.