Honolulu’s Jeff Stabile remembers his 15-year-old self, all 6 feet, 6 inches of him, competing in the 3-meter springboard as a junior national diver, launching himself skyward into rarefied air and envisioning one day being an Olympian.

Nearly 43 years later, Stabile is where he always dreamed he’d be, but not as a competitor — that desire died after college in his eyes — but as a diving judge.

Talk about rarefied air. Stabile is one of only 23 in the entire world selected to be a diving judge. He’s also the only one from the United States.

“Incredibly exciting,” he said during two hours of interviews. “Obviously, it’s the pinnacle of what you can be as a diving judge.”

The process of becoming the chosen one for Paris wasn’t easy.

He was informed that he would be nominated after the Tokyo Olympics. Over the next three years, he was put under a microscope. Stabile would judge World Championships and World Cup events and be evaluated by World Aquatics to prove he could “perform under that kind of pressure at that level.”

After that Stabile said he still had to wait for confirmation from World Aquatics.

“They went through a big process of analyzing everybody’s evaluation numbers,” he said. “We have to achieve at least a 95% in order to be considered eligible to judge the Olympics, and we have to do that over multiple competitions. And I’ve had that kind of numbers for many years — for 15 years I’ve had those numbers. At this time, I was in the right position to be put forward as a nominee.”

He finally got a confirmation email on March 8. He left for the Olympics on Friday.

If you think being nominated was painstaking, think of what a judge is responsible for.

A dive, according to Stabile’s estimation, lasts about 1.5 seconds for 3-meter springboard and 1.7 seconds for 10-meter platform.

Once the dive is completed, points are locked in almost instantaneously, taking between a half-second and two seconds, he said.

So in that blink of an eye, here’s what a judge has to look for:

“First off we look for both technique and artistry,” Stabile said.

Then Stabile rattled off this:

“So the technique, you’re looking for how high they go in the air. If they’re in springboard, how they stay in sync with the diving board and push it down, let it ride and let it push them up in the air. You’re looking at the parabola or the trajectory of the dive, the ratio of the height to the distance is really important. You’re looking for how they connect into somersaulting actions to make it smooth and move upward as they’re rotating into it. Make sure their positions are nice. If it’s a tuck position, that they have a compact small position, with their knee close to their shoulders and their heels close to their butt and squeezing nice and small so to make a nice round shape. If it’s a pike position, the legs are completely straight, the toes are pointed that they’re in small so the chest is close to their legs. You’re looking for visual spotting, where they’re coming out of a somersault looking to see where the water is so they can some come out of the right time, to get a vertical entry …

“And in terms of artistry, you’re looking for how beautifully they present themselves when they’re standing there, how confident they are, how their posture is aligned, when they’re doing their walk down the board, how smooth and controlled it is, how rhythmic it is. How high they get up on their hurdle — that’s when they jump off one leg and land on two legs at the end of the board — how aligned it is at the end of the board, how in line with the board going forward, that it’s not off to one side when they come off the board, getting a full range of extension, full range of motion with their arm actions, their leg actions, getting into their compact positions, making sure those positions look really pretty. That’s the aesthetic aspect of it.”

“So that’s both of those things you’re looking at.”

Wait, what? You see all that within a couple of seconds?

“We’ve been trained to do this for many, many years,” he said. “We do de-briefings after the events with the technical officials.”

Stabile’s brain just functions at warp speed. He was incredibly driven and pragmatic from a young age.

He got hooked at age 5 after seeing a lifeguard at a community pool in Illinois do “amazing” things off the board. He moved to California at 13, got a top national coach, “and made the nationals within six months.”

He was precocious enough to approach his high school swim coach and ask if he could coach the divers. He coached high school all four years.

“When I first started diving on that national-level team, I thought to myself, you know what, my ultimate goal here is going to be Olympic trials,” he said. “I think that I’m talented enough that I can to get to the Olympic trials. I don’t think I’m going to be good enough to get to the Olympics.

“I’m 6 foot 6, my body type is not a diving body,” he said. “Additionally, I’m slow twitch. I didn’t started training and knowing a lot of this stuff to take all my uncommitted muscle fibers and train them to be fast twitch.”

Still, he became an NCAA Division III champion while setting school records as a freshman and sophomore at UC San Diego in 1985 and 1986, then transferred to UCLA and competed in the NCAA Division I and Pac-12 championships.

He has a psychology degree from UCLA, worked at a law firm afterward, earned his sign language interpreting credentials from Pierce College and then got a master’s degree in deaf education from Cal State Northridge.

Stabile moved here in 1999, just 20 days after competing in a masters nationals competition at the University of Hawaii. “When I saw Waimea Bay, I was like, ‘OK, I can definitely live here.’ ”

He’s a teacher at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind, runs his Tropic Lightning Diving Team (though he’s taking a hiatus this year because of the Olympic duties), and has coached numerous high school champions, the most accomplished being Aleia Monden of St. Andrew’s Priory, who set a state record in 2006 and became an All-American at Florida State, and the latest being Kalani’s Hailey Takai, who won states in 2022 and 2023.

Rodd Johnson, a recreational springboard diving coach at the Veterans Memorial Aquatic Center at Patsy T. Mink Central Oahu Regional Park, said he’s in awe of the wealth of knowledge he’s gained working with Stabile.

“He’s a true master of his craft … (it’s been) a joy to work with him,” Johnson said. “He’s a perfectionist in his own diving (Stabile’s still videotapes his own dives and evaluates himself.).”

For Stabile, everything has a purpose.

At UCLA he switched majors from pre-med to psychology because he wanted to know what kept him from reaching the elite level in diving.

“I thought I was capable of maybe being an Olympic trials-level diver. … I always felt I had those skills but I didn’t have the competitive skills to be on that level,” he said.

“I was an alternate to get to the senior nationals, which is where you need to go to qualify for the Olympic trials. Six times I was the alternate. … The fact I was getting so close and not getting there bugged me.”

It wasn’t the coaching, he said, because his coach regularly got divers to the trials and even the Olympics. It wasn’t his drive because “there’s nobody who’s into the sport more than I am.

“I didn’t have a piece that was missing, and to me it was the psycho-emotional piece.”

Even learning sign language was very intentional. He would date a deaf man and basically taught himself by picking up a sign language dictionary.

After college and realizing he wasn’t going to be an Olympic-level diver, Stabile “channeled my energy more into coaching and found success where I was getting kids to the Olympic trials.”

He became a head coach at Rose Bowl Aquatics but eventually had a falling out with the administration.

“At that point I’m over the whole diving thing,” he said.

His final meet of the year was the senior masters at UH. He enjoyed Hawaii and its people so much he basically never left.

During that time as competitive diver, Stabile was surrounded (usually on rival teams) by top-level divers. Many became Olympic medalists, including Wendy Wyland (bronze, 1984), Michele Mitchell (silver in 1984 and 1988) and Greg Louganis (five medals, including four gold over three Olympics).

“So I was around all these amazingly skilled divers and coaches,” Stabile said. “I was around people who were just that good, all the way through my career.

“When I finally became a judge, oh, I found my niche, where I’m that good, too.”

He feels honored to be a judge and ready for the responsibility.

“Having that level of trust from the World Aquatics board that I’m one of the judges who’s entrusted to make those distinctions and to judge accurately and fairly to make sure that the divers who performed the best that day are the ones who are getting the medals and who are getting to the finals. It is a huge responsibility that I welcome and feel comfortable with … I don’t feel intimidated by that. My love of sport, my background and experiences have all led me on a path where I feel where I am one of people who is born to do this … is born to be very able to be very fair and unbiased and (to) make sure that I am accurately ranking everybody’s scores and helping achieve fair competitions that showcase the athletes and reward the great things they’re doing and give them information for what they need to improve.”