MARYSVILLE – Most people would become more apprehensive after breaking their back.

But Lexi Kilbourn isn’t most people. She’s actually become more “fearless.”

Lexi, a senior at Marysville Getchell High School, broke the school record in diving Tuesday with 262.55 points. She had a temporary tattoo of a roaring lion on her right arm, denoting how fearless she planned to be at her last home meet. A big smile broke out on her face when she said longtime friend and diving foe Lauren Carson never did that.

Carson, who graduated from Marysville-Pilchuck last summer, is now diving at a college in California. Her coach wants to recruit Lexi to go there, too.

Carson placed ninth at state last year. Lexi wants to beat that, placing eighth or better. She thinks she can do it after placing first or second at all of her meets this year.

Lexi broke her back doing a double backflip in gymnastics in a floor routine. “I was half a centimeter from being paralyzed,” she said.

She wore a back brace, “a turtle shell,” for six months. She quit gymnastics and took her freshman year off to heal but also because she was “scared.”

Her sophomore year she tried diving and went to state.

“This is my thing,” she remembered thinking.

But it’s not her only thing. To show how fearless she is, Lexi also turns out for wrestling.

“My mom doesn’t like me wrestling,” she admitted.

And, in track, she competes in one of the scariest events of all – the pole vault. She hopes to break the school record of 10 feet, 3 inches this year. She fell 3 inches short last spring. By the way, Carson also was a pole vaulter who hit 10 feet.

Lexi has re-injured her back playing sports many times. She can also hurt it standing or sitting too long, or arching her back wrong. She said diving has made her tougher.

“After breaking my back, I thought nothing can hurt worse than this,” she said. “I want to live my life and do crazy stuff.”

Such as being the swim team’s “belly flop champion.” Lexi said every year she challenges the football team to a belly flop competition. She said she always wins, even though she doesn’t have a belly and some of her grid-iron foes do. “I’ll just go up 10 feet” off the board to get a big splash, she said.

Describing her top diver in one word, coach Shauna Kopischka said, “fearless. She’s not afraid. And her flexibility is amazing.”

Because of that, Kopischka said she pushes Lexi to try harder dives. They don’t have a spotting rope, which means the only way they can practice a dive before getting on the board is on the ground. She can now do an inward 1 1/2 pike, and she’s working on a back somersault with a 2 1/2 twist, which has a high difficulty rating of 2.7.

“If you don’t try you never know” if you can do it,” she said. “Some of the hard dives end in a smack.”

Kopischka said she doesn’t know if Lexi will do any of those tougher dives at state, where they judge more on “clean dives.”

Without Carson around to push her, Lexi said she is doing that more on her own.

“I want to go out with a bang my senior year,” she said.

Instead of being pushed, as a team captain she instead pushes others. She has especially taken freshman Devon Keater under her wing. “I feel like I can help her break her gymnastics habits,” Lexi said.

Her pupil has been having a good year, placing second to her mentor in many meets.